New death laws not the answer, say GPs

VICTORIANS need to embrace dying and improve palliative care instead of legalising assisted dying for the terminally ill, say former state presidents of the Australian Medical Association.

Doctors Stephen Parnis, Mukesh Haikerwal and Mark Yates visited state parliament yesterday talking to MPs before the introduction of assisted dying laws.

The Andrews Government plans in coming days to introduce the legislation that would allow those with less than 12 months to live to access physician-assisted death from 2019.

“The key concerns that I have are that this puts the most frail and vulnerable in our community, the dying, at profound risk,” Dr Parnis said.

“Doctors can deliver effective, timely care so that the horror deaths that you hear about, that are dramatised, that are over-emphasised in terms of numbers, they need not occur if the palliative system is delivered well.”

Dr Parnis said predicting life expectancy out to 12 months was a lottery and safeguards flagged by the government did not go far enough.

“The safeguards they’ve put in place, you could drive a truck through,” he said.

Dr Yates said the laws reflected more about how little the community knew about dealing with death, rather than the ability for medical professionals to deliver care with better funding.

“We as a community need to embrace dying well and that doesn’t mean that we circumvent the process of dying just because we find it a bit inconvenient to hang around in that time,” he said.

The AMA yesterday issued a statement reinforcing that while the three men were once state presidents and are entitled to their personal views, the organisation’s stance on assisted dying has changed since their tenures.

The association’s current position on assisted dying is that if a government decides to change laws, the medical profession must be involved to develop protections for doctors, vulnerable patients and those who do not wish to participate.