Do You Want the Right to Kill Yourself? Renegade Doctor Offers Controversial 'Death Kit'

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted October 3, 2009.

Step aside Jack Kevorkian, there's a new "Dr. Death" in town.

Ten years after the notorious Michigan doctor was ultimately jailed for killing a patient -- one of 130 he helped die through lethal injection -- Philip Nitschke, a new renegade physician, is spreading the gospel of assisted suicide -- and he's coming to the United States next month.

Nitschke is the 61-year-old Australian founder and director of the pro-assisted-suicide organization, Exit International. (Motto: "A Peaceful Death Is Everybody's Right.")

Based in Melbourne, Australia, the vocal advocacy group has gone beyond the legislative projects of other right-to-die organizations, who want to decriminalize euthanasia, to develop an array of educational tools for people considering ending their lives on their own terms.

These include public meetings ("free and open to all"), "ExiTutorials" (formerly called "Workshops"), private home visits, and, most recently, an "Exit kit," which is best described as a do-it-yourself lab test for people who wish to commit suicide but want to make sure they do it right.

The battle over health care reform may be raging too intensely for Americans to notice right now. But while end-of-life questions are distorted into wild and ominous claims that "death panels" will "pull the plug on Grandma," elsewhere in the world, from Australia to Canada, the right-to-die debate is heating up.

It's not the same debate it used to be. Reuters reported this spring: "It used to be an issue just for the terminally ill. Now, as populations around the world age, governments are increasingly being confronted with the taboo idea of dying as something people can volunteer to do."

Foolproofing Sucide?

At $50 a pop, the Exit kit was developed to help people who have already procured lethal drugs -- specifically, the barbituate Nembutal, which is sold over the counter in Mexico -- to ensure that they are still potent enough to kill after spending time in storage.

Time magazine explained earlier this year: "When someone with a terminal illness decides to end his or her life by overdosing on barbiturates, they may hope the drugs will lull them into a peaceful and permanent sleep. But if the drugs have passed their expiration date or lack a sufficiently lethal concentration, the would-be suicide victim may actually survive -- risking an array of complications, including coma, reduced physical functioning and the opprobrium of disapproving friends and family."

"Now, in an effort to provide certainty to those contemplating suicide, one of the world's leading euthanasia advocates plans to sell barbiturate-testing kits to confirm that deadly drug cocktails are, in fact, deadly."

Exit International also sells a book ($35) called The Peaceful Pill Handbook, a sort of suicide tutorial that, in addition to defending suicide as a legitimate choice that can be made by lucid people (whether they are terminally ill or simply "tired of life"), provides readers with eight ways to kill themselves. (The group boasts a research-and-development arm, which is focused on coming up with "various end-of-life approaches that are reliable, peaceful and dignified.")

Some of these methods are spotlighted on Exit International's Web site through an assortment of (admittedly weird and, really, pretty creepy) instructional videos featuring a grandmotherly "nurse educator" named Betty, who gives short, cheerful lessons on the finer points of suicide, all to a jaunty instrumental soundtrack.

(In one, titled "Doing It With Betty," she shows you how to make an "Exit Bag," which consists of a plastic oven bag with a drawstring. "What I usually do is just reinforce with two piece of tape …" she says, as if death by self-asphyxiation is a hobby of hers.)

The videos carry the disclaimer: "This Material Is Not Suitable for Children or Anybody Suffering From Depression or Mental Illness."

In March, the Australian government, which has banned The Peaceful Pill Handbook, also banned two of the "Betty" videos, prompting an angry response from Betty.

"My generation has lived through a lot, including WW II," said 78-year-old Betty Peters, an Exit International volunteer. "We, more than most people, know about death, and many of us don't want to suffer the pain and indignity of illness or a prolonged period as a vegetable in a nursing home."

A former physician, Philip Nitschke has been working on end-of-life tools for years. In 1996, he achieved fame by helping four people kill themselves through a computerized lethal-injection system he called the Deliverance Machine. At the time, it was legal under Australia's short-lived Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.

As he described in the introduction to The Peaceful Pill Handbook, "the computer presented a short series of questions" before administering the lethal injection:

1. Are you aware that if you go ahead to the last screen and press the "yes" button you will be given a lethal dose of medication and die?

2. Are you certain you understand that if you proceed and press the "yes" button on the next screen you will die?

3. In 15 seconds you will be given a lethal injection … press "yes" to proceed.

"After pressing the button for the third time, the machine started up and delivered to each patient a lethal dose of the barbiturate Nembutal," he wrote. "At the time of their choosing, the Deliverance machine enabled those four people to die, peacefully and with dignity."

See more stories tagged with: healthcare, right to die, assisted suicide, dr. philip nitschke, exit international, hospice care, jack kevorkian

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of Rights & Liberties and World Special Coverage. http://twitter.com/LilianaSegura

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