To proceed the patient must be competent, their consent must be voluntary, free of external influence and continuous. Photo / File
To proceed the patient must be competent, their consent must be voluntary, free of external influence and continuous. Photo / File
There they go again. TV disappointing viewers.
On February 14 the 6pm TV1 news contained material which purported to deal with polls reflecting possible voter reaction to the planned referendum in the 2020 election on the EOLC Act (End Of Life Choice) Act, which has been enacted but awaitsendorsement by voters.
The matter is contentious and is represented on one side by those who support the law and on the other, by those opposed.
Those opposed to the EOLC Act consistently use the term "euthanasia" to describe the process.
Those in support emphasise the actual name of the EOLC, the word, "choice" which the Act defines as patient-initiated consent that is competent, voluntary and continuous throughout.
Certainly the reporting should have questioned the polls' results inasmuch the way questions are framed can determine the answers desired. This question was never addressed — and it should be.
The newsreaders, however, put their collective thumb on the scales by using the term "euthanasia" without any mention of the complex matter of choice.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines that term as the killing of an animal or a person who is suffering from a disease or injury that cannot be cured.
Some definitions include the modifier that the killing is done without pain. Synonyms include such freighted terms as "mercy killing".
The fact that euthanasia is defined as it is, an action performed upon an animal or a human, precludes choice or sentient cognitive participation, inasmuch as the term is applied to mercy killing of animals as well as humans.
Consent is not a part of killing animals.
By using the term in application to humans, the user obscures the fact that humans have the ability to give consent.
The absence of consent in any way, visually or verbally presented lends to the false impression which anti-choice opponents have promulgated that the law would act to coerce vulnerable people to have their lives taken.
In fact, that last phrase, of "lives taken" rather than the actual law's words reflecting choice, and autonomy, was further fostered by the visual images in the background of some sort of intravenous infusion, including an ominous image of a syringe.
The producers could have known that intravenous delivery of a lethal compound is the last choice under the Act, offered only when the dying person has chosen this method rather than to self-administer pills, nonetheless with competent voluntary assent of that dying person.
TV1's visual presentation omits any images connoting voluntariness, the intravenous set-up suggesting, instead, something more of an execution.
That in the latter part of the news programme a severely injured sea lion is described as having been euthanised adds additional weight to the idea of a death imposed rather than one competently chosen.
The matter is contentious and is represented on one side by those who support the law and on the other, by those opposed. Photo / File
The essence of the EOLC Act provisions is that the process must be patient initiated, and eligibility determined by at least two independent health care professionals.
Eligibility is restricted to those with a terminal illness, a life expectancy of six months.
To proceed the patient must be competent, their consent must be voluntary, free of external influence and continuous.
Those complexities of voluntariness and consent were absent from the programme, to the disadvantage of the ordinary TV viewer.
Our law is based almost exactly on the one in Oregon, USA where two decades of experience since enactment have produced none of the instances of coercion, feared and promulgated by the anti-choice groups.
Democracy depends upon an informed electorate, not one given one-sided propaganda.
A more appropriate remedy for TV1's one-sided presentation, would be afforded by presenting physicians in support, who can explain what the Act actually entails.
TV1 needs to contact Dr Jack Havill, spokesman for a group of physicians in support of the EOLC, and invite a member of that group to speak and present the facts of the EOLC Act.
• Dr Havill's name supplied with his permission.
• Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
