Damned if I Do (16 page)

In Australia, the emergence in recent years of Christian activist and Democratic Labor Party hopeful
Paul Russell and his
‘HOPE' anti-euthanasia group has not only led to a proliferation of skewed blog headlines, but also to an attack on my
medical registration. A debate with Russell at the Liberal Club at the University of Adelaide in mid 2012 ­produced the blog headline ‘Euthanasia Campaigner Philip
Nitschke Meets His Match in Debate'. No one who attended
thought that, but his blog on the event was immediately repeated and re-repeated throughout the global network of church and fundamentalist anti-euthanasia websites.

While he might be a polite, smiling and even warm-hearted opponent, Russell's ruthless determination to have me deregistered as a doctor is unabating. That he is a former employee in the Office of Family and Life in the Catholic Church in Adelaide, as well as holding the DLP's number one Senate spot in the 2010 federal election, gives him ready access to several mainstream journalists, only too keen to push their own ideological bandwagons. And so it was that I learned about the launching of a second enquiry by the Australian Medical Board
(AHPRA) into my fitness to practise medicine, not in a letter from the investigating authority, but rather from the senior political journalist of
The Australian
and Catholic hardliner,
Dennis Shanahan. Dennis rang to inform me that his ‘reliable sources' had told him of the decision by the Medical Board to act on a complaint by Paul Russell. His article, ‘Nitschke Accused of Gas Import Scam' would appear as an exclusive in the national press the following day. It was another week before I finally received formal notification from AHPRA. Yes, a second investigation in regard to my being a ‘fit and proper' person to hold ­medical registration had been launched. The reason? My involvement with
Max Dog Brewing nitrogen cylinders. That Shanahan knew of AHPRA's investigation before I did is ­farcical. Of course, journalists will jump at the whiff of blood and go for any headline. Interestingly, the same news story produced a second, much friendlier headline, ‘Nitschke May Lose His Medical Licence Over Beer' in the
NT News
the following day.
11

Internationally, the anti-euthanasia internet campaign is led by a number of zealots. Canadian pro-life activist
Alex Schadenberg is one. His parents are known in Canada as ­pro-life pioneers and his blog shows a fixation on my ­activities and those of Exit. Schadenberg, his American
anti-euthanasia counterpart
Wesley J. Smith, and their UK equivalent, expat New Zealander
Peter Saunders use the new media relentlessly, spreading the lies and half truths that have grown up over the years. If I believed half of what they wrote, I'd be scared of me too. However, truth is commonly the first casualty in debates where religious fundamentalists are involved. Just ask the ­feminists in the pro-choice/­abortion debate.

When I look back on my interaction with the media, it is
Max Bell and
Murray McLaughlin's ABC
Four Corners
episode ‘
Road to Nowhere' that I come back to time and time again. When surgeon
Jon Wardill saw Max's suffering on the ABC, he broke ranks with the medical establishment. This was
activist journalism at its best, whether McLaughlin intended it to be or not.

Allen Ginsberg once famously noted ‘whoever controls the media … controls the culture', and so it is. I can forgive the
media much when it makes good things happen; when minds are prised open and democracy begins to work. Media coverage is pivotal to social change and my supping at the devil's table seems the necessary price to pay.

FIFTEEN

Censorship

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.

Tom Smothers

W
ithholding information from people who need it has always annoyed me. It was the reason for my anger when I wasn't allowed to see or respond to the letter that was so critical of me when I took up my rangering job.
Censorship offends one's sense of fair play and strikes at the heart of free speech. Over the past decade I've watched with dismay as censorship continues to rear its ugly head.

The censorship of euthanasia has taken many forms. Parliament has introduced laws and regulations to ­prevent elderly Australians from accessing the end-of-life ­information they want. This has seen the
banning of the
Peaceful Pill Handbook
, the
banning of a television commercial that Exit com­missioned, and the near banning of an
advertising billboard. The Queensland Government even once sent an inspector to a workshop I was holding at the Brisbane City Library in order to ensure that a three-minute film made for Exit by
Steve Hopes
(
Do It Yourself with Betty
) about how to make an
Exit bag would not be shown to the assembled audience of fifty or so octogenarians. The reason? The film had not been classified by the Office of Film and Literature Classification and may be ‘objectionable'.

Internationally,
YouTube has responded to complaints (who knows by whom or how many) to remove some of Exit's
videos, including
Do It Yourself with Betty
. This quirky 2009 film featured retired nurse-educator
Betty Peters OAM, who describes the steps involved in the home manufacture of an Exit bag. Once posted on YouTube.com, the comic and cleverly tongue-in-cheek
Betty
became an instant hit, rocketing up the rankings to become the most viewed video about voluntary euthanasia. For two years, nothing happened. Then, without warning, we were contacted by YouTube and told to remove the video, or we would have all of our YouTube films (about fifteen were running at that time) taken down. YouTube accused Exit of breaching its commu­nity standard guidelines. Given the questionable ­material released daily on YouTube, my initial thought was,
That's quite an achievement. How could anyone offend YouTube's ­standards?
I often ­comment at Exit meetings that, given the rubbish on YouTube, it takes some doing to offend them. Since that time someone unknown to me has ripped off the
Betty
video and reposted it back on YouTube under the title ‘How to make an Exit bag'. While I'd normally complain about having my intellectual property stolen, this is one time I'm happy to let the matter go through to the keeper.
1

Another instance of censorship internationally was
PayPal's decision in mid 2012 to cancel Exit's account. Overnight I found that our account with
PayPal had been frozen and several thousand dollars retained by them for six months.
Google, too, has long had issues with sponsored ads mentioning the word ‘euthanasia', arguing that voluntary euthanasia equates to the incitement of violence and is therefore unacceptable.

Other surreptitious acts aimed at stifling my words and damaging my reputation include hostile alterations to Wikipedia entries related to me and the tagging of Exit videos by pro-life groups (to enable, for example, unrelated pro-life videos to play immediately after the our films). Such attacks are unrelenting, often coming from expected quarters and occasionally from some quite unexpected places, both within Australia and overseas.

The
banning of
The Peaceful Pill Handbook
in early 2007 was not the first instance of the Australian Government censoring my voluntary euthanasia work, although it has been the most enduring. This practical guidebook took many years to write and came about primarily because I became unable to keep up with the demand for practical end-of-life information. Every day questions would arrive by letter, email, fax and phone. ‘How can I store my Mexican Nembutal so it will be okay in ten years?' ‘I've got asthma, can I still use an
Exit bag with nitrogen?' And so on. There was no way of answering so many individual questions, so many times over. The logical solution was a mass-market paperback. Even as the project took shape, the politically hostile climate in Australia suggested that a book of this nature would need to be published elsewhere. With its constitutional protection of free speech, the United States was the obvious place to do it. But let me backtrack.

The first time I felt the heavy hand of censorship being applied to the euthanasia issue was in 2001. This was follow­ing an especially well-attended series of Exit
workshops.
Wesley J. Smith—one of several Americans who have become key adversaries over the years—made a speaking visit to Australia that year. After an interview in
The Australian
newspaper, Catholic journalist
Dennis Shanahan ran a front-page story claiming that elderly Australians were importing ­custom-made plastic Exit bags from a Canadian activist by the name of
Evelyn Martens.
2
Dennis, who strongly opposes voluntary euthanasia, accused me of telling people that ­plastic bags could be used for a peaceful hypoxic (low-oxygen) death. He called the process a grim suffocation (which it's not).
3
However, the article had its desired effect. The very next day, 21 August 2001, the
Howard government's Justice and Customs Minister,
Chris Ellison, called for an urgent report from Customs to determine whether there were grounds to prevent the importation of plastic bags into Australia. While the ministerial ­directive seemed bizarre, it didn't stop there. Ellison didn't only want the physical items, the plastic bags, seized, he also wanted to intercept ‘information' about them. He wanted to outlaw all information that might explain what they did and why.

On 5 September 2002, Senator Ellison got his way. On that day, the
Customs Act
was quietly amended to prohibit the import or export of items associated with ending one's life and, more importantly,
information
about these items. Like most Australians I was unaware of this important change. Indeed, it was not until I was leaving the country in early January 2003, and got dragged out of the boarding queue at Tullamarine Airport, that the Minister's intentions really hit home.

Usually, as you go through Customs and Immigration, they scan your passport, say a few words and on you go to your waiting flight. But on this occasion, I was not waved on. Instead, I was taken aside to a small room where I found the contents of my suitcases spread out before me.

‘We have found items in your luggage that breach the Australian
Customs Act
.'

I was perplexed.

He went on, ‘We have found printed material,' they said, holding up some pieces of paper. ‘What are these?' one of them asked, holding up some PVC tubing.

I said, ‘I'm on my way to a right-to-die conference in San Diego.'

There was to be no negotiation.
While I was eventually allowed through, my
‘COGen' (a carbon-monoxide generator) and the accompanying instruction sheets were retained by the officer. When I asked where such authority came from, the reply was: ‘It's a change to the Act. Here's a copy of it; read it if you like, and see your lawyers.'

News of the airport incident reached Los Angeles before I did, and the cameras were waiting. The American media seemed perplexed: end-of-life information ­confiscated—how bad must it have been? ‘You wouldn't have that ­problem here,' was the common comment. I had two weeks to reflect on the issue, and wondered,
What's happening to my ­country?
On my return to Australia, I was again taken out of the queue and my bags searched, and more printed material was removed. Australia was joining the long list of infamous regimes that censor the written word.

And the censoring of information about voluntary euthanasia is not solely the domain of politicians. When
Janine Hosking's feature documentary
Mademoiselle and the Doctor
was scheduled to be shown on the
Compass
program on ABC television in 2005, presenter
Geraldine Doogue took it upon herself to personally object. Doogue demanded that a ninety-second segment of the film be removed. This was the scene where Lisette Nigot (Mademoiselle) discusses why she will not use an
Exit bag to take her own life. Although the film had been examined and approved by ABC lawyers prior to screening, Doogue issued a statement saying the segment ‘breached our editorial codes and responsibility as a public broadcaster' and could not, therefore, be screened. When the incident was examined on the ABC's
Media Watch
program, Janine Hosking expressed her frustration, adding that the film had become a ‘study guide shown to senior ­secondary school students' throughout Australia.
4

Although the changes to the
Customs Act
were cause for concern, I was not overly worried. In the back of my mind was the thought that airport searches for restricted information were never going to be effective. After all, I could just shift the paper version of the information onto USB drive. That would fool the Customs officers. And besides, why bother even taking it with me when I could just as easily load it onto the internet before my departure. Indeed, my smug response when asked about the
Customs Act
­amendments was, ‘Fine; if that's the way the government wants it, we'll just put the material on the internet.'

My complacency was, however, to be short lived. I soon heard of another piece of proposed legislation; the
Suicide-Related Materials Offences Act
.
This Act amends the
Commonwealth Criminal Code
, and makes it a crime to use a ‘carriage service' (i.e. the internet) to send or receive ­suicide-related material. In other words, it prohibits the use of the internet, email, fax and telephone to discuss the practical aspects of voluntary euthanasia.

In the months prior to this legislation being brought before the federal parliament, a Senate inquiry was held. I put in a submission opposing it, and travelled to Canberra to appear at the public hearings. The
Greens and the
Democrats opposed the law at both the inquiry level and in parliament, but to no avail. In September 2006, the amendment was passed with the full support of the major parties. And so in Australia it is now against the law to pick up the telephone and talk to your brother or sister, or anyone else for that matter, about the possibility of ending one's life and how to go about it. Like changes to the
Customs Act
before it, most Australians remain blissfully unaware of what their ­government has done.

The publication of
The Peaceful Pill Handbook
in the
US, in September 2006, marked an important turning point in our attempt to insulate Exit's activities from Australian Government interference. From our new operating base in Michigan, headed by my old friend
Neal Nicol, the one-time assistant of Dr
Jack Kevorkian, the fledgling US arm of Exit International was born. From day one, the
Handbook
took off and now sells widely around the world, satisfying the growing needs of elderly people wanting to be informed about their practical end-of-life choices.

The book was
launched by
Derek Humphry in Toronto at the
World Federation Right to Die Societies annual conference. Derek's landmark book
Final Exit
had been published more than a decade earlier and, as I write in the dedication of
The Peaceful Pill Handbook
, Derek had ‘paved the way'. At the launch, there was no indication of problems associated with publishing a book of this nature. However, it was not long until big problems would emerge. After the conference, we planned to bring some forty copies of the new book back to Australia for Exit members. As Fiona and I were travelling on to Mexico to undertake some Nembutal R&D, Exit's Gold Coast Coordinator,
Elaine Arch-Rowe, was flying straight back to Brisbane. It made sense that she take the copies with her. No one expected there to be an issue. The US-published book had its own ISBN number, was freely selling in bookshops, and was available on Amazon. But Australian Customs had other ideas.

At Brisbane Airport, Elaine's suitcase was
seized by Customs and all forty books confiscated. Again the ­legislation cited was the
Customs Act
. Crazy, but not unheard of. (Some eighty years earlier in 1930, Australian Customs had seized copies of
Norman Lindsay's banned booked
Redheap
, about a fictitious Australian country town. The ban on this book
would not be overturned in Australia until 1958, despite ­selling freely around the world in the intervening twenty-eight-year period.) At this point, I thought,
All right, let's be sensible and
apply to have the book formally classified. Let's test its right to be ­distributed in Australia. If that's successful, we'll be able to publish without the need to import
.

After going through the paperwork and paying the (significant) fee, we submitted the book to the Office of Film and Literature Classification for formal classification in October 2006. While I wasn't very hopeful, we were at least playing by the rules. In December, we received a very ­pleasant surprise: ‘
Restricted R18' classification. This meant that anyone over eighteen years could legally buy
The Peaceful Pill Handbook
, but it would need to be sold in plain paper wrapping, and carry the required R18 classification logo on the front cover. Just like hardcore porn, it would need to be stored under a store's counter, rather than on open display. We could live with these conditions. We were thrilled. An initial print run of 5000 soon sold out. But the
Howard government was not done yet. Within four weeks of being granted the R18 classification, I got a phone call from
The Australian
's top sleuth,
Dennis Shanahan. I was in the US at the time but I remember the call well. Dennis wanted comment on how I felt about Federal Attorney-General
Philip Ruddock's decision to appeal the judgment of the independent Office of Film and Literature Classification. This was the first I knew that Ruddock was escalating the matter. He was demanding that the decision of the Classification Review Board be reviewed. The co-initiator of the appeal was
Right to Life Australia. The government waived Right to Life's application fees.