Nitschke "Assists" in Death of Non-Terminal Patient

By Liz Townsend

Claiming that Nancy Crick had terminal cancer, Australia's "Dr. Death," Philip Nitschke, "helped" the 69-year-old woman kill herself May 22. However, Nitschke soon admitted that Crick's medical condition was not terminal, forcing euthanasia proponents to justify Nitschke's actions before a largely critical Australian public.

Euthanasia is illegal in Australia, and local police are investigating Crick's death, The Australian reported. The Queensland Medical Board told the Courier Mail that it would not consider looking into Nitschke's actions until the official coroner's report is released. Nitschke is licensed as a general practitioner in Queensland, according to the Courier Mail.

Since February, Crick maintained a web site on which she posted a diary justifying her death. She specifically stated that she had bowel cancer, that the pain control she was receiving was helping a little but she was still suffering, and that she wanted to die. She set several different dates for her death, postponing it again and again.

On May 22, however, with 21 witnesses and Nitschke looking on, she took an overdose of barbiturates washed down with liquor, according to the Herald Sun. After her death, reports began to surface that her medical condition was not as dire as the public had been led to believe.

According to the Herald Sun, a government pathologist reported he could find no visual trace of cancer, but did discover that Crick had suffered from a twisted bowel. Nitschke told The Age that he was present when doctors told Crick two months before her death that her bowel cancer had been removed. When Crick asked why she was still in pain, the doctors said that another operation might be able to help, but Crick refused to have the surgery.

Nitschke said that it was "irrelevant" whether or not her medical condition was terminal, the Herald Sun reported. He added that his only regret about Crick's death was that he should have been more honest about her condition before she died. "Now I think we should have perhaps stressed it more . . . if I was doing it again, I would have stressed it more," he told The Age. "It was a mistake in emphasis."

Brian Harradine, a prominent pro-life senator, called on police to investigate the campaigner's role in Crick's death. "It is clear that Mrs. Crick and her family relied heavily on Nitschke's advice," he said.

To pro-lifers, Crick's death is a prime example of the abuses inherent in euthanasia. Nitschke and his supporters argued that Crick's suffering was enough to justify her death, whether or not she had a terminal illness.

"Asserting that there is such a thing as a human life not worthy of living is a fundamental ethical error," said Brian Johnston, director of National Right to Life's Western office. "The problem that euthanasia advocates have is that it is also their fundamental premise. Whether the T-4 program found in Germany in the 1930s, 'Angels of Death' in modern American hospitals, or Nitschke's cavalier assertion of 'irrelevance,' the end is the same. Medicine used to kill by its very nature will be used against the vulnerable non-terminal," he said.

"You may as well define life as a 'terminal illness,' since everyone dies eventually," wrote Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald. "And why stop there? The utilitarian approach to life could extend to 75-year-olds with dodgy hips. Or with impatient heirs. Or people without any friends. Or who are depressed. Or maybe fat people. Or people who pick their noses. Once you allow the state to end a life according to its quality, the potential is endless."

Medical experts agree that Crick's death shows that accepting euthanasia for some reasons would inevitably lead to more deaths.

"The euthanasia movement denies the slippery slope argument, they say it won't happen," David Kissane, professor of palliative care at Melbourne University, told The Age. "But we've just seen, in real time, precisely that happen with Nancy Crick. And as a result, they've damaged their own cause."