GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Former Australian PM Bob Hawke backs euthanasia

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BioEdge: Former Australian PM Bob Hawke backs euthanasia

Former Australian PM Bob Hawke backs euthanasia

by Michael Cook | 15 Apr 2016 |

Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke

Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke has emerged as a strong supporter of legalised euthanasia. In an interview on ABC Radio, he said that some people were dying in terrible pain and should be able to schedule their own deaths. In his judgement, it is an “inarguable case”:

“In my judgement, there's no moral or ethical grounds for the absurdity of having a position where a person is in terrible pain and for some quasi-religious or moral reason you're going to make them suffer and suffer and suffer.”

For Hawke, a Rhodes Scholar who became the longest-serving Labor PM since Federation in 1901, the prospect of “losing his marbles” is unbearable, although he says that he has always been in favour of euthanasia. He even backs euthanasia for teenagers. "A 15-year-old can be in a position where he's got very limited life expectancy and the only certainty is excruciating pain," he said. "The principle is generally valid, I believe."

Hawke claims that many politicians are too cowardly to speak in favour “assisted dying” even though some opinion polls show 60 to 70% of Australian are in favour of it.

Paul Russell, a well-known Australian anti-euthanasia campaigner, observed that “losing my marbles” is a kind of vilification of patients with dementia. “He is saying, in a shorthand way, that he doesn't want to be like them. It is a pejorative; an unwelcome slight that reinforces discrimination.”

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/former-australian-pm-bob-hawke-backs-euthanasia/11832#sthash.o2MuVIiD.dpuf

Bioedge

Former Austraiian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who is now 86, has publicly backed euthanasia, even for teenagers. He says that he fears the indignity of "losing his marbles" -- something he is trying to keep at bay with crosswords and suduko. He told euthanasia activist Andrew Denton that his second wife, Blanche d'Alpuget, will know what to do if he ever reaches that stage.

Acting as a poster boy for euthanasia is a sad end to a distinguished career. But it is, in a way, understandable. Dementia must be terrifying for people without adequate family support because of fractured relationships. And Mr Hawke, sadly, fractured his in a very public way by divorcing his first wife Hazel, who had been his spouse when he was Prime Minister, to marry his biographer, Ms d'Alpuget.

Hazel went on to be one of the most respected and best-loved women in public life in Australia. People praised her honesty and courage when she admitted that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. She even published a book about it. Eventually she had to enter a nursing home where she lived for four years before her death. Mr Hawke was not there to help her.

For all of his intelligence and charm, Bob Hawke is wrong about euthanasia. Dementia is a disability and a civilised society does not solve the problem of disability by killing the disabled. The real indignity comes when the "abled" neglect their responsibility to care for the weak and vulnerable