[Right_to_die] N Z doctor not saying whether he helped his mother to die

[World right-to-die news list (nonprofit)]

The New Zealand Herald reported on 7 June 09:

  Pleading case for death with dignity

By Nicola Shepheard

Sean Davison watched his mother try to starve herself to death to escape 
the cancer ransacking her life.

Patricia Davison understood her body's collapse, having practised as a 
GP and psychiatrist.

At 84, she was still acutely intelligent, but multiple cancers had 
robbed her of her joys - painting, reading, her ability to engage in the 
world she loved.

Determined to die, she summoned Davison from his South African home and 
asked him to help her.

The hunger strike, which she kept up for 35 days, backfired. It ravaged 
her body further but did not provide the lasting release she sought.

In his diary, Davison detailed the three months he spent at her side. He 
wrote about the old hurts and tensions that surface when family and 
friends gather, the appalling experience of watching someone you love 
diminish and suffer.

Finally, Patricia, who practised under the name Fergusson, died in her 
Dunedin home on October 25, 2006. It was not the self-imposed starvation 
that killed her - but her son will not detail how she did die.

This month, an edited version of his diary entries will be published as 
Before We Say Goodbye. Auckland-born Davison, a professor of 
biotechnology in Cape Town, is arriving back in New Zealand today ahead 
of the book's launch. While he's here, he will publicly press for the 
legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.

In a note prefacing the book Davison says: "against my desires, much has 
been removed". It's clear he resents the deletions. Davison is used to 
shining a light on things others would rather remain obscured. At the 
University of Western Cape, he heads the forensic laboratory that 
specialises in DNA identifications to resolve human rights cases in 
South Africa.

"I'm a free-thinking man ... I have nothing to hide," he says on the 
phone from Cape Town, where he lives with his wife and baby. "There's 
nothing in the book to incriminate me. And I won't be implicating myself 
when I'm in New Zealand. It's actually irrelevant whether I did or 
didn't; that's not the point. The point is, I should never have been in 
that situation."

He'd never thought much about euthanasia before his mother's death. "It 
only crossed my mind afterwards: this should never have happened, the 
way she died."

Davison seems bemused at the media anticipation his book and calls for 
law change have already created. "It's a low-key book, it's not 
sensational" he insists. "It's an old lady; possibly her son helped her 
die. I don't think it should be controversial. If this happened in South 
Africa, it wouldn't even make the papers. It's such a right thing to do."

LESLEY MARTIN warns that by speaking out, Davison may be "making himself 
a target for a huge hidden wave of grief and despair that is out there".

A former nurse, Martin martyred herself to the euthanasia cause through 
her book To Die Like a Dog which describes how she gave her mother an 
overdose of morphine and smothered her with a pillow to release her from 
painful cancer complications. Found guilty of attempted murder, she 
served half of her 15-month sentence in 2004.

Now she's studying psychology and heads Dignity New Zealand, a lobby 
group that seeks to legalise assisted suicide, and to develop the 
expertise and an alternative hospice network ready to ensure the 
practice is safe.

The group is courting MPs to sponsor legislation after a 2000 private 
member's bill for voluntary euthanisation was defeated by two votes.

Martin points to a recent survey by Massey University that found 70 per 
cent support for physician-assisted suicide for someone with a painful, 
incurable disease. "For the majority of people it is that loss of sense 
of self," she says, "that feeling that they believe profoundly they 
should have the right to make decisions over their deaths."

Something is wrong, she argues, when people aged 85 or older are 
committing suicide at a rate of 20.7 per 100,000, the second highest 
among all age groups; and when an unknown number of people are resorting 
to the euthanasia underground.

The law change would have to be "contained, accountable and legitimate," 
she says.

Martin has distanced herself from a prominent underground figure, 
Australia's Dr Death, Philip Nitschke, who is famous for peddling his 
DIY suicide kit around the world.

"He refuses to be held accountable for the fact that more and more [his 
methods] are falling into the wrong hands."