Episode 1 - The Invasion of Death

My name is Andrew Denton. I’m a writer and broadcaster who lives in Sydney, Australia.

In October 2015, I delivered a public address arguing for an assisted dying law in my country. This podcast is the end result of that process. In it, you will hear the voices of those who I spoke to for my research and learn the reasons that led me to argue for a new, and merciful, law.

Episode 2 - How dare you want to end your life: Liz's story

Liz is a dynamic 48 year-old businesswoman who’s dying of cancer. She wants to have a choice about how she dies because she’s been through palliative care. In her words: ‘They can’t control your pain, let me tell you. I’ve been there.’.

Episode 3 - The 80-year-old outlaw

According to Canadian anti-euthanasia campaigner Alex Schadenberg, Melbourne doctor Rodney Syme is a threat to society: a ‘cowboy’ and ‘the worst of the worst’. Why? Because for over a decade now, Syme has been publicly assisting terminally and chronically ill patients to die – despite the threat of jail for doing so. How did a respectable 80-year-old urologist come to be a law-breaking cowboy?

Episode 4 - It can never be perfect, so why try and improve it?

Opponents of assisted dying in Australia want to leave things as they are, because of the worrying things they claim might happen if we did have a law.

But what about the worrying things that actually are happening because we don’t have one?

Episode 5 - The keys to life and death in someone else's hands: the Netherlands, part 1

The Netherlands’ euthanasia laws are the longest-running in Europe.

Surprisingly, the drive to create them didn’t come from politicians; it came from doctors. Recognising that, like doctors in many countries (including our own), they were already assisting people to die, they pushed for a law that would bring the practice into the light – protecting both them and their patients.

Episode 6 - Once you start killing, you can't stop: the Netherlands, part 2

For those who hold out the Netherlands as a textbook case of a ‘slippery slope’, they see a law originally designed to help the terminally ill – but that has now ‘slipped’ to include those who aren’t. But the Dutch law wasn’t written to deal only with certain diseases; guided by doctors themselves, it was deliberately created for people whose suffering is ‘unbearable and untreatable’.

This might include, for example, people with long-term, corrosive illnesses such as multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease. In some circumstances, it may even include people with Alzheimer’s.

But if the basis of your law is that only a mentally competent adult can request euthanasia, how do you deal with cases where that competence is unclear?

Episode 7 - The killing fields of Belgium, part 1

If there is an epicentre for anti-euthanasia sentiment, it’s Belgium – home to what are often described as the most liberal euthanasia laws in the world. Here, people of any age – even, in some circumstances, children – can be euthanised.

Allegations are made of a euthanasia culture that has become so uncaring that the elderly are regularly despatched without their consent. The word ‘murder’ is sometimes used.

Episode 8 - Darkness visible: Marjorie, Edith and Laura: Belgium, part 2

Shortly after arriving in Belgium, I learned of ‘Laura’ – a 24-year-old woman who had sought the right to be euthanised after years of unrelieved mental suffering.

Immediately, I heard alarm bells.

My gut reaction?

If you’d asked me to tell you the point where it began to feel uncomfortable, this was it.

Episode 9 - Why should one church decide for all of us? Death with dignity in Oregon

The success of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act – at 18 years, the world’s longest-running law of this kind – puts two things into sharp relief. Firstly, the increasingly desperate attempts of opponents to discredit it. Secondly, the truth they don’t want you to see – that this law works, and exactly as intended.

How that law came to pass in such a religiously conservative country stands as a masterclass in public policy, and one that set the template other US states have since followed.

Episode 10 - Neither hasten nor prolong death: palliative care in Australia, part 1

Speaking with doctors in Belgium, the Netherlands and Oregon, I’d learnt that in those places, palliative care and assisted dying are seen as things that go together – and assisting a patient to die may sometimes be the ultimate offer of help for those beyond the skills of even the most dedicated palliative care experts.

Back home in Australia, the law forbids assisted dying. Without a law to protect or guide doctors and nurses, I wondered: how does palliative care here deal with those same kinds of patients?

Episode 11 - Whose life is it anyway?: palliative care in Australia, part 2

Associate Professor Richard Chye is the director of the Sacred Heart palliative care unit at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. A gifted physician and teacher, he is also a hugely influential figure in palliative care in Australia. Apart from being a member of various state and national committees, he’s a board member of Palliative Care Australia – the peak national organisation.

Responding to my request, Richard invited me to spend a week with his team to see what they do – and to discuss the subject of assisted dying.

Episode 12 - Velvet Ray

Ray Godbold is a palliative care nurse faced with terminal cancer – but he doesn’t want to die in palliative care.