Their treatment of a recent article published in The Guardian provides a striking example.

This tender story of elderly Australian couple, Ron and Irene, told by their granddaughter, recounts their decision to access voluntary assisted dying (VAD) in NSW.

Both Ron and Irene had terminal illnesses – cancer in Ron’s case and a degenerative neurological condition in Irene’s.

Assessed and approved for VAD independently, the couple was determined to die as they had lived for more than seven decades – together. According to their granddaughter, they died “calmly, quickly, with dignity. In a room full of love, with smiles on their faces and without any pain”.

So how did opponents of VAD – determined to derail a vote on its legalisation in the UK parliament – choose to portray this final chapter of a 70-year-long love story?

Within hours of publication, the misinformation and innuendo began.

“A textbook case of how doctors subvert the rules to help patients without any terminal illness whatsoever to die by suicide,” claimed palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke on X. “It could not highlight more starkly the dangers of the law we are currently debating”.

Clarke, a former journalist, ploughed on.

“In the piece, doctors in New South Wales … collude with two elderly people … to end their lives,” she asserted.

“They are both very old and wish to die, No terminal condition. No expectation of death within 6 months. Yet they found two doctors only too happy to sign off their double suicide & prescribe the lethal drugs.

“And the family of the dead couple are so confident this is all OK that they wrote about it in a UK newspaper," she wrote.

Today the Observer has published an extraordinary piece, which I think they view as a romantic case for assisted dying, but which is, in fact, a textbook case of how doctors subvert the rules to help patients without any terminal illness whatsoever to die by suicide.

It could… pic.twitter.com/MPzK4nRJqk

— Dr Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) June 8, 2025

Clarke’s unfounded claims were quickly seized upon by others, like The Guardian’s own former columnist, Sonia Sodha.

“This story of a suicide pact is from a place where the law's very similar to what's being proposed in the UK,” Sodha wrote on X. “It contains multiple red flags for the way it's open to abuse to allow people without terminal illnesses to kill themselves with medical assistance."

And on it went. Next, Hannah Barnes writing in The New Statesman.

“A Guardian article published on 7 June … showed the Australian system being abused… An elderly couple had been granted VAD when neither were terminally ill; medics in New South Wales effectively greenlit their suicide pact,” Barnes wrote.

At Go Gentle, we believe facts matter. We contacted the author of the original article, Sharnee Rawson, who said she was devastated that opponents had weaponised her grandparents’ story. She told us:

-Both Ron and Irene had extensive medical issues, including terminal cancer and neurological conditions, which were omitted from the story out of respect for their privacy.

-They each endured long periods of pain and suffering.

-The NSW VAD Board was meticulous in its deliberations, and both cases were treated as distinct, with separate and independent eligibility verifications.

We asked her to clarify the couple’s VAD eligibility. She referred us to a paragraph in her original story:

Eligibility is strict; in NSW, a person must make three requests (two verbal, one written), be assessed by two separate physicians and a board, and, crucially, suffer from a terminal illness that is expected to cause death within six months.

Her grandparents did not die in a “suicide pact”, aided by willing doctors acting outside of the law.

Both Ron and Irene were terminally ill, each with 6 months or less to live, and satisfied all eligibility requirements. As Sharnee said: Their story simply shares a very rare opportunity to die with dignity and agency in the face of dual terminal diagnoses.

If only opponents displayed a fraction of that dignity.

Objecting to VAD is one thing – after all, the first word of VAD is ‘voluntary’; no-one is compelled to take part, patient or medical professional.

But carelessly – or worse, knowingly – telling lies and spreading misinformation? That is not OK. Neither is slandering doctors who are working, lawfully, to relieve the suffering of their patients.

Most unforgivable, the cruel gaslighting of a grieving family who, with gratitude, wanted the world to know about the courage of a couple in their 90s who chose dignity and autonomy over suffering at the end of life.

To read more about the facts of VAD in NSW, go to VAD in my State on the Go Gentle website.

Or visit NSW Health.