TV row takes toll on cancer sufferer

SYDNEY - The dying woman who appears in a pro-euthanasia television advertisement that has become Australia's most controversial commercial without ever screening may be forced to withdraw from filming commitments.

The ad in which June Burns, who suffers incurable bladder cancer, appeals for the right to die will run for the first time between 10 am and 10.30 am on Channel 9 today, said network manager Garry Abbott.

The 90-second ad was made for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New South Wales to place the issue on the political agenda for the NSW state election in 10 days.

The ad features 54-year-old Mrs Burns asking that she be allowed to die by her own hand.

"I don't want to have to kill myself, but if nobody can help me, I'm going to have to," she pleads in the advert as she fights back tears.

"If I was a dog, by now the RSPCA would be on to my husband for cruelty and would have me put down straight away," she says, lying in bed in her home in Queensland. "I think human beings are treated worse than animals.

"I feel life is very precious and I've enjoyed every moment of it and I wish I could go on, but I can't and I'd like to die with dignity," she says.

The Catholic Church said on Sunday that Mrs Burns was being exploited for political gain.

Advertising agency Ammirati Puris Lintas has booked Mrs Burns to appear in one commercial a week until her death, with a print campaign also beginning this week.

However, the filming and intense media scrutiny sparked by the campaign is now taking its toll on the mother-of-four, the Voluntary Euthanasia Society confirmed yesterday.

"It's taken a hell of a lot out of her," society secretary Carmel Marjenburg said. "She can't cope ... She didn't expect it to turn into the thing it has."

A spokeswoman for the advertising agency said Mrs Burns was determined to continue appearing in the commercials even though the society was concerned for her health.

Despite renewed opposition from anti-euthanasia groups, the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations approved airing of the commercial after it was satisfied that the ad did not amount to outright advocacy of suicide.

But it has been classified as political advertising and given a rating which means it can only be broadcast between 8.30 am and 4 pm.

A NSW Upper House candidate, Damien Tudehope, who represents the Australian Family Alliance party, said turning the plight of a dying woman into a political football was a "sick, dehumanising act."

The ad has re-ignited debate on the right to die in a country that has been at the forefront of the campaign to legalise it.

In 1997, an Australian man became the world's first to die by legally sanctioned euthanasia. Under the Northern Territory legislation that allowed it, two doctors had to confirm a patient was terminally ill and suffering unbearable pain before life could be ended.

A psychiatrist then had to confirm the patient was not suffering a treatable clinical depression.

Three others took advantage of the law before it was killed off by a conscience vote in Australia's federal Senate last March. - NZPA