In Western Australia, urologist Daryl Stephens is facing a charge of wilful murder or aiding a suicide relating to the death in hospital of a terminally ill kidney cancer patient, Freda Hayes, 48. Dr Stephens and two of his patient's siblings have been accused of helping her die last February. The case may offer clarification of some of the complex legal issues. But while the churches and mainstream medical opinion remains opposed to voluntary euthanasia, Syme says the reality is that it has been happening long before the NT law, and is still going on. Conversely, because of the threat of legal sanctions, he says, doctors in the palliative care area are under-medicating many patients who are in pain.
Doctors are frightened of the law.
To Life, strongly disagrees. She says proponents of euthanasia exaggerate the incidence to make their political points. If doctors are allowed to kill patients it will eventually become easier, cheaper and quicker to kill people rather than to strive to help them to live even as they are dying. In addition to that, there will be pressure on people who are elderly. After the patients died, he even informed the Victorian coroner about his actions in a bid to clarify how far doctors can go under the law.