"She ended up saying, 'Why don't you mind your own business. "I was saying things like, 'Why don't you go on a world cruise? Why don't you write a book?'" Nitschke says. His support of death for rational adults like Lisette Nigot, a healthy Australian woman who decided when she turned 80 that enough was enough and she would kill herself, has alienated more moderate elements in the pro-euthanasia movement. I think we should respect the right of rational adults to make this choice." "It doesn't have to be serious disease," Nitschke says. And only the terminally ill qualify in most of those places. Now that the practice is illegal in his home state, Nitschke has hit the worldwide lecture circuit - he's due to conduct workshops in the United States in November - providing suicide tips and campaigning for the right to die.Įuthanasia, in some form, is legal only in Thailand, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Holland, as well as Washington State and Oregon. "I mean, I knew I was doing the right thing," says Nitschke, who says he's not religious. Nitschke says he never questions what he is doing in light of the judgment of others or the biblical prohibition against killing. "People said, 'Sunday is the day I want to die," he says. In all, Nitschke helped four people die before the law was overturned. "They pressed a button on the machine, the machine delivered the drugs and they died in the arms of the persons they loved." In 1996, Australia's Northern Territory, his home state, legalized doctor-assisted suicide. Nitschke was the first doctor in the modern world to legally kill his patients. "There's a lot of knowledge involved and I suppose over the years I've acquired a lot of it." "You have to think, what happens if I vomit?" he says. At closed workshops - open only to those who pay a fee of about $40, are older than 50 and of sound mind - Nitschke gets into the details. Nitschke has accompanied terminally ill patients on trips to buy it. The drug is, however, available in Mexican pet stores over the counter. Marilyn Monroe and others died from Nembutal overdoses. And veterinarians use it as an anaesthetic and to euthanize sick animals. It's not available over the counter in the United States anymore, but the FDA-approved human uses include treatment of seizures and as a short-term hypnotic. Nembutal was once commonly used to treat insomnia. He plans to sell the kits on the Internet for about $50. This, Nitschke argues, is information and not encouragement. ![]() "By the slow addition of the component in the third ampoule here, the amount needed to turn it back into a colorless liquid gives you an idea of what the strength of the Nembutal must have been in this bottle." He lifts a syringe out of the small plastic box adorned with the Exit International logo. "They'd probably go out and hang themselves. He says that without his information, most people wouldn't know how to gas themselves efficiently. "We tell them about how they can control the gas flow using a fitting that fits onto a cylinder of helium," Nitschke says just before his Brighton meeting. Nitschke also brought with him the "exit bag" and assorted paraphernalia used to demonstrate killing oneself with a plastic bag and helium. Using one of the kits, a potentially suicidal person can make sure that the drugs he or she plans to use are strong enough to kill. Encouraging suicide is illegal in Britain and most other places.īut Nitschke was allowed into Britain carrying drug-testing kits. Immigration officials eventually decided that Nitschke merely provides information about suicide and does not encourage people to take their own lives. Nitschke, 61, was detained last month at London's Heathrow Airport for 11 hours on his way to Brighton. Take the Quiz to Find Out Which Commandment You're Breaking Today He admits that he pushes the limits of biblical and civil law. ![]() Nitschke, a straight-talking Australian who studied at the University of Adelaide, Flinders University and Sydney University, has been investigated by police and hounded by protesters for years.
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