🚀 go-pugleaf

In Message-ID <5h0890$h7d$1@euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au>,
d-moss@adfa.oz.au (David Moss) wrote:-

>Euthanasia Lobby exposes RTI Dangers

>"Recent publicity from the Australian pro-euthanasia lobby, intended
>to win Senators emotions, may backfire boosting support for the
>anti-euthanasia Andrews Bill."
> 
>"The publicity campaign featured pleas from patients who have all the
>necessary paperwork signed, but are not yet ready to end their lives.
>Euthanasia advocates have been using letters, and even voice
>recordings from patients to apply emotional pressure on  the eve of
>the Andrews Bill vote."

>"Instead they have exposed some fundamental flaws in the world's first
>euthanasia law, the Northern Territory's Rights of the Terminally Ill
>Act 1995."

>"All of these patients convinced their doctor they were experiencing
>pain, suffering and/or distress to an unacceptable extent. This is the
>first and most basic requirement under the RTI Act. "

>"Yet in the letters and recordings in the publicity, the patients
>indicate they had no intention of ending this suffering in the near
>future, unless forced to do so by the impending Senate vote."

>"The patients are clearly willing to accept their level of pain,
>suffering or distress at this time, so the question must be asked:
>'why did their doctor sign the paperwork in the first place?'"

>"Insufficient safeguards against inappropriate access leave the RTI
>Act seriously flawed."

>"Another glaring weakness exposed is accountability for what happens
>when a patient rescinds a request under the RTI Act."

>"The statements in the letters and recordings clearly show the
>patients do not wish to be 'assisted' to die at this time."

>"The RTI Act is very clear about the procedure should the patient
>decide he/she does not want to proceed."

>"Yet instead of destroying the paperwork as required by the Act, we
>are seeing these patients held hostage to the pro-euthanasia lobby's
>demands on the Senate."

>"If the pro-euthanasia lobby is willing to thumb its nose at the
>existing safeguards in the act in order to attract publicity, what
>hope do we have that these safeguards will be applied when no-one is
>looking ?"

>"Even the financial safeguards built into the RTI Act barely survived
>its first use."

>"The Voluntary Euthanasia Fighting Fund which has so far raised in
>excess of $6000 coincidentally has an advertisement on the
>"Deliverance" Internet site, the only place in the world Dr Philip
>Nitschke announces details of deaths under the RTI Act."

>"By exclusively announcing details alongside a request for donations
>to his passionate cause, Dr Nitschke may well be in breach  of the RTI
>Act."

>"The pro-euthanasia lobby's publicity campaign has backfired badly"

>"Their publicity highlights just how badly the controversial
>legislation is already being misused."

>"Australian Senators are due to vote on a Bill to overturn the RTI Act
>on Monday, and by exposing widespread misuse of the RTI Act at the
>last moment, the pro-euthanasia lobby may well have sealed its fate."

Gad, what is this stuff? Just who or what are you quoting here,
David????


   "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - power is
   ever stealing from the many to the few."
                        -WENDELL PHILLIPS, speech (1852)