THE WA Supreme Court has ruled that a quadriplegic man can request to stop being tube-fed so he can die.
Chief Justice Wayne Martin said the Brightwater Care Group would not be criminally responsible by ceasing nutrition and hydration through a tube to the stomach of Christian Rossiter, a 49-year-old in their care.
Chief Justice Martin also said any person providing palliative care to Mr Rossiter would not be criminally responsible.
He said it was clear Mr Rossiter had the right to direct his treatment and nutrition and hydration “should not be administered against his wishes.”
A win for the principle that rational adults should be the ones to make decisions about their own bodies. But a loss for the idea that rational adults should be the ones to make decisions about their own bodies.
I’m glad that the court has ruled that he should not be force fed against his will, and more importantly I’m pleased that it has been made clear that no other person will be held responsible for not over-ruling his decision.
But at the same time, it needs to be recognised that starving to death is not a good way to die. It is not fair that Mr Rossiter sees this as his best option.
At the end of the reading of the statement Ms Black asked Mr Rossiter if he had anything further to say.
There was a long pause until he replied, “I want to say that the pain killers would make me drowsy and I would like to be made drowsy in my final moments so that time could pass more quickly.”
“And I would like to watch Foxtel on the television to pass the time.”
I hope that Mr Rossiter’s final moments are as quick and pain-free as possible, and I hope that our governments stop allowing a few arrogant loudmouths to make end-of-life decisions for the rest of us.
It will be pretty lingering and unpleasant death, and all because he can’t self-administer. A really ground-breaking judgement would have been to allow Mr Rossiter, as a quadriplegic, to obtain positive assistance to die quickly. We are after all, allowed to committ suicide, that’s not illegal. Death by Foxtel seems unbearably cruel.
Actually, suicide is illegal, I think. Which is why it’s probably the best solution that the courts could have come to in the circumstances.
I’m sure a lawyer or two will turn up to confirm or clarify.
Hate to break this to you, but old people who want to die have been starving themselves to death (or refusing food) for probably just about ever – including in nursing homes or managed care. They are not forced to eat usually. This law is just catching up – as usual.
I don’t think suicide is illegal. But assisting it certainly is.
Yeah, I can just see the cops being called into all the nursing homes and hauling off to jail all the old folks who’re refusing to eat, charging them with “illegal suicide”.
There’s no criminal offence of suicide in WA, at least. I don’t know about the other States.
As well as the offence of ‘assisting suicide’, there is also an offence of ‘hastening the death’ of a person and a provision that can make a failure to provide the ‘necessities of life’ to a person (i.e. food and water) a criminal offence where the person so failing has a responsibility to provide them. The judgment by Martin CJ would appear to provide something of a defence against those charges in circumstances analogous to those of Mr Rossiter.
I got it all planned. When life becomes insupportable I’m heading off to Thredbo in the winter and will walk out in the snow in the middle of the night with some sleeping pills and four bottles of Southern Comfort. Got the idea from Koestler’s No Exit.
Personally, I think its outrageous this bloke has to starve to death. Surely, since its at his own request, undoubtedly after a great deal of thought, he should be given some kind of drug that puts him to death peacefully. Starving him to death is inhumane.
I find it incredibly stupid that we can let him die, but only by starving to death. Sometimes compromise is worse than either alternative.
His courage to do this is kind of amazing.
Paul Burns@7 and Topher@8
Totally agree
Paul Burns @7, that sounds like a pretty good way to go – kinda like Lawrence Oates in Antarctica: “I am going outside – I may be some time”.
That’s if there is still winter snow at Thredbo. Might need a plan B.
Anna – the reality is aspects of palliative care treatment for patients involve not giving food and water.
Angela
I have it on good authority from a chap who had an extremely serious go at starving himself to death it was easy after the second day. Apparently with minimal fluids and no tucker the body more or less stops feeling intensely hungry.
This bloke got to the stage of causing serious liver damage, so he was pretty serious about his attempt as well.
Not a “nice” way to die, but tolerable.
A good friend’s father has just been diagnosed with very advanced esophageal cancer. He’s taken the “no treatment” option and will effectively starve to death. The family is running around trying to get 24 hr company for him so he “doesn’t do anything stupid”.
He was working, playing golf, being a grandfather, and now they think he’s not capable of making decisons just because they don’t like the one he’s made.
Which is even less impressive given that its pretty much impossible to treat oesophageal cancer anyway. Chemo won’t touch it, and you can’t give radiation due to its location in the body (full paralysis would result at almost any angle. Except for the angle where the beam is aimed right at your brain, which would be lethal). The tissue’s characteristics mean that it can’t be effectively resected either. The kill rate is >99%, so its not like he’s making a poor decision. Its just about been made for him.
Darin, your friend’s father is obviously being incredibly selfish. His life is not his own; you’d have to be a nihilist to think it is. He is not the person who has to deal with his death.
The decision here is not at all a win, it is a loss. If a depressed person wants to die, we consider that a medical emergency. The depressed person is in a kind of real, true pain. What makes it acceptable for these old people to die? Because we don’t want to be reminded of our own mortality so we put them in boxes or burn them up asap? God help us if full-on euthanasia ever becomes legal and socially acceptable, because then people will be choosing to die against the will and better judgement, just because there’s some crazy notion that it’s more honorable or better for their family or something crazy.
People who want to die should always be given the help they need—to not want to die.
Paul@7: Problem is by the time you had reached the point where you were ready to die you may no longer be able to get to Thredbo let alone walk unassisted into the night.
Somehow we need a civilized system that allows people to make rational decisions about when to die, how to die and who they would like to help them die. But if we have such as system we also need to protect the old and disabled from pressure to die early for the convenience of others. It may also sound a bit paternalistic but we also need to protect people from making rash decisions to die diring bouts of depression or when they are in the process of coming to terms with being confined to wheelchairs etc.
Of course, but we should also look to the abortion debate before we start going down that road. There are precautions we should absolutely take, but we also must be mindful of the most important issue, which is that despite what pseudonymous coward argues, people’s lives and bodies are their own to do what they feel is best with. Ultimately it’s up to each of us to decide whose advice we’ll consider and whose feelings we’ll take into account.
I am sure all the we wes here are qualified caring and convincing.I personally think that the doctors,probably,do not know what they are doing for his life or death.I have that problem,and if I was biting my tongue about it,I would say,has anyone thought of feeding him under his tongue rather than through tubes or whatever!?And has he ever had an experience of a floatation tank,which means he could have a John C Lillie Experience! Seeing he is younger than me,I wonder if his real problem isn’t just a lovely cerebral event away.Morphine maybe a floating experience,but there are other ones as well.We still have governments and doctors today who like lunatics hang on disgracefully when new knowledge is a foot.In short,I hope for him.
I have spent many years assisting in the feeding of people who often have no prospect of recovering from whatever illness and/or age is destroying them. Often living for years in agony and severe mental trauma, largely due to the fact that their relatives will not conceive of a timely death for their loved one.
I have never understood how blind the law is and how it is so often applied in an unlawful, about face. And it is at this point that there exists a circuit breaker for many, many people in this predicament.
The very existence of a tube for feeding people is the crux of the issue. The insertion of a tube into another’s body, whether via the nose or directly into the stomach through the abdominal wall is an intrusive medical/surgical proceedure. No such proceedures are lawful without signed “Informed Consent”.
Without “Informed Consent” any medical proceedure is unlawful – an act that itself should be the subject of legal consequences. Likewise no establishment can permit a surgical proceedure being carried out on someone in their care – without the signed consent of that person.
Otherwise the “patient” becomes a “victim” – of an offence.
Each and every one of us is entitled – no: each and every one of us must give signed consent for such a proceedure. If we are incapable, then our nearest relatives must.
This is then more complicated and should be the lightning rod for each of us to have prepared Advanced Medical Directives and ensure we have organised Enduring Power of Attorney.
This must be done with people who know exactly your intentions and with whom you/we have discussed this issue through very thoroughly. They need to be absolutely clear what our/your intentions are, to ensure that none of us have to go through the long and aweful trials this poor man has just had.
Make sure your GP knows absolutely how you think and if they don’t seem to understand, find another who does. Make sure your kids know and understand.
It is a matter of life and death.
Pseudonymous coward, that is a ridiculous argument. Someone else will have to deal with his death in any case, whenever it occurs. And the next time I have to deal with a death, I’ll feel better (as I already know from experience) knowing that I didn’t insist on keeping whoever it is alive and in agony / despair / a persistent vegetative state, against his or her will.
Before saying this I want to distance myself from Pseudonymous Coward’s stance, but I am disturbed that there seems so little examination of how Christian’s options and experiences became so limited after his injury that he sees no point to life.
I regularly interact online with people who are profoundly disabled and requiring constant pain management but who do not feel trapped and abandoned to a life with no purpose as Christian claims about his own situation. Why on earth doesn’t he at least have a computer so that he can argue with people on the Internet?
I still support his right to choose to die, entirely. But I am also very concerned that a man with the potential to interact with a broad range of people around the world instead has spent the last few years mostly alone in a room with a TV. I probably wouldn’t want to cling on to that life either, but why wasn’t he given the opportunity to live a better one?
Tigtog, we don’t know that much about his life – what options he’s been given, what his belief system is, what he enjoys, what his life was like before the illness etc. So, I think we shouldn’t presume that he hasn’t been offered other options. The internet maybe a literal lifesaver for some people of absolutely no solution to others. Some people decide that there is a time when it’s right for them to die and offering other options is of little interest to them.
Agreed that we don’t know that much about what options he’s been offered. But the description of him spending most of his day in the nursing home alone in front of a TV has been widely repeated.
Surely he should have better options for human interaction than that available.
Wonder what the ‘teabaggers’ would think of this? what with all the ‘death panel’ bs and all.
Have to agree with you Anna, a plus and a minus. Absolutely agree Mervyn.
Anna @18: When I was talking about rash I was thinking about a teenager despairing of lost love or someone of any age who has just had a few bad days in a row. If I was going to help someone end their life I would want to be sure that the person does understand the alternatives and has made a sensible choice. I would also want be sure that I wasn’t exposed to claims of murder because the decision hadn’t been checked by an appropriate group of people.
I do have some doubts about a quadraplegic’s decision to end their life. My reading of the literature is that there is a good chance of ways being found in the not so distance future for the use of limbs to be recovered and/or for the brain to be able to control directly prosthetic limbs. In the end, someone in this position should have the right to decide how long they want to go on living in hope. The case of someone who will die after a few weeks of pain is a different issue and should be treated differently.
Remember “Little Big Man.”? “It’s a good day to die!” Never forgotten it myself. I hope I know and can act on a good day to die.
As some-one suffering from prostate cancer, currently in remission from Zoladex treatment, which makes you drowsy and completely, absolutely removes your sex drive, to the point you never think about (which, in regard to the latter side effect, btw, is absolutely wonderful – a lot less wasted time in several ways), I’ve had ten years to think about this. Especially if it turns out to be summer. I could I suppose OD on heroin, but a) I’ve never used it so I’d have no idea how much to take b0 I haven’t a clue where to get it in Armidale or anywhere else c) I hate, hate, hate needles . And when you have at least two blood tests a year comprising three lots of blood = 3 needles, + Zoladex every three months which has a needle the size of a large nail + all the blood tests I get with my usually bi-annual trips to hospital, + drips etc. etc. you get what I mean when I say,I hate needles. (Plus all the other bloody needles I’m likely to have in the future the doctor’s not told me about yet.) Besides, with my luck, some friend I haven’t seen for ages would probably turn up at my flat and revive me.
Or I could swim out into the ocean and rown, at night, so nobody can rescue me.
I know enough about prostate cancer to know my PSA levels will indicate my time to off it. After that, its just a question of will. And I’m a stubborn old bastard.
The point is, people with terminal illnesses should be able to chose when and how they want to die, painlessly. And what is happening to this 38 year old who could live for years if he doesn’t strarve to death is abominable.
And nor am I unaware of the strength of the life-force, having nearly drowned thirty years ago. Believe me, and this is not contradictory I hope, generally people really don’t want to die.
My mother essentially starved to death a few years ago. It wasn’t exactly deliberate, just a consequence of various ailments that meant she just couldn’t fit in enough food to keep herself alive. (It took many months, and she weighed about 30kg at the end.)
It didn’t seem to me to be too bad a way to die. Mum wasn’t in great distress towards the end (except when she had to be helped out of bed to go to the toilet as she had so little flesh left on her bones that physical contact was painful), but I think it was made easier by a morphine pump she had for the last couple of days.
At least this bloke’s made the choice himself. It’s just very sad that his life is such that he wants to die.
PC@16 “His life is not his own; you’d have to be a nihilist to think it is. He is not the person who has to deal with his death.”
No, he’s the only one who can deal with his death. Any other interested persons deal with his remains.
Having spent 9 months visiting patients in the spinal ward I applaud this decision. Over the years many Perth spinal patients have opted to starve to death so I am surprised that Mr Rossiter had to take his case to court.
I think the medical fraternity should have more regard to the “quality of life” issues facing their patients prior to undertaking surgical treatments.
There is no virtue in saving someone’s life when you know the patient will be confined to a nursing home watching TV with old folks and being fed nutritionally poor meals. It’s easy for hospitals to identify which patients have strong familial and friendship bonds and which patients are socially isolated.
Does PC @ #17 visit a nursing home daily/weekly/monthly? Never – well butt out!