Dr. Philip Nietzsche, a doctor from Australia, joins us to talk about assisted suicide. Dr. Nietzsche's assisted suicide machine was confiscated by the Australian government when he flew out to San Diego last week. He has been working on a replacement for the confiscated machine ever since.
00:00:55.000No, but it wasn't available to give anyone a look at yesterday.
00:01:00.000Well, I would think that a bottle of carbon monoxide and a gas mask with a feeder tube to it would be sufficient.
00:01:07.000I'm a little worried about your design here saying it's just in the nostrils because somebody will open their mouth and then you might just brain damage them.
00:01:16.000I mean, it's very hard to get hold of cylinders of carbon monoxide.
00:01:19.000They're difficult to obtain for a assortment of reasons.
00:01:22.000So the generator actually makes the gas.
00:01:25.000It is true that we have it delivered through, as you say, a nasal tube, as opposed to a face mask.
00:01:31.000But, I mean, two or three breaths of pure carbon monoxide delivered this way causes the death of a patient.
00:01:37.000So, it's not as if it's easily dislodged, and it's not as if one is likely to, in some way, during some protracted process, dislodge the tube.
00:01:48.000What about just a cooler full of dry ice in a contained room?
00:04:01.000Alright folks, we're talking to Dr. Philip Neitchie, and he's got his assisted suicide machine that was confiscated
00:04:09.000by the Australian government when he flew out to San Diego last week,
00:04:13.000and he gave his talk at the conference this weekend, over the weekend.
00:04:18.000Dr. Nietzsche, I don't think it's progressive and loving and compassionate to have the government, to have doctors involved in suicide Certainly people should be given whatever type of painkillers they need.
00:04:35.000I don't know if you're aware of the cases.
00:04:37.000Have you ever heard of Wesley Smith and the articles he's written for the Wall Street Journal about how they've already got these bioethics boards where they're not going to give people care?
00:04:45.000If they don't think that their quality of life is good enough to try to take care of them, it's this whole movement I'm concerned about.
00:04:57.000I'm certainly well aware of Wesley's contribution to the debate, and disappointing it is too.
00:05:05.000I see that it's a caring and compassionate thing to give people options and to give people choice.
00:05:09.000And if you don't give people options and you don't give them choice, you see the sorts of things that are happening in your society and ours right now.
00:05:16.000The commonest way the over 75 end their lives in Australia now is by hanging.
00:05:23.000And to do nothing is to leave that situation in place.
00:05:26.000When you actually engage with people, when you actually give them choice and give them options, people Perhaps paradoxically, live longer.
00:05:32.000When they've got choices and they know that they can have a peaceful death in the face of severe suffering, they're more inclined to let the disease process take its place.
00:05:41.000If you deny them that choice and tell them that all that they will get given is better and better pain relief, when pain is often not the issue, then you find that people do desperate things.
00:05:51.000Well, I saw in the reports of a lot of the people that Kavorkian killed and others, and these are confirmed reports, some of them weren't even physically ill, they were just nut cases.
00:06:01.000And I mean, what about killing people that are mentally ill?
00:06:05.000I mean, if somebody shows up and says, I'm dying, I'm in pain, kill me, and then, you know, you sell them the machine.
00:06:11.000I mean, this is a... Well, we don't sell the machines.
00:06:13.000People join our organization, and as members of our organization, and they've been members for quite a while, over a year, in fact, and then they've attended workshops.
00:06:23.000Then they might get access to such devices and such machines, but it's not as though they're available on the street corner.
00:06:30.000We say basically that people that are...
00:06:33.000Suffering from psychiatric illness and what have you that you've just indicated are not people who are going to get access to these things.
00:06:39.000But I mean, look, we're doing what we can in the light of no decent legislation.
00:06:43.000There's no indication that politicians of our country, or for that matter your country, are planning to introduce progressive legislation such as we saw in the Northern Territory and such as you now have in Oregon.
00:06:54.000And if that were the case, no one would be running around developing such machines.
00:06:58.000It's in the light of politicians Well, Denver, Colorado hospitals said a few months ago that they're not going to defibrillate people, even though their brains are still alive.
00:07:11.000I'm worried about the bioethics move that supports the kind of stuff you're doing, Dr. Nietzsche.
00:07:17.000I'm worried about states, you know, in a kind of soylent green type mode.
00:07:22.000I mean, some people in some of the Scandinavian nations are now wearing little toe rings that say, don't kill me, and carrying cards in the backs of their pockets that say that.
00:07:31.000We're the states moving in to force this on people.
00:07:34.000In fact, you say you're aware of Wesley Smith.
00:07:36.000I mean, he names the names of people that have been begging for water, begging for food, who've been paralyzed from the neck down, who've been denied it.
00:07:51.000We occasionally are afflicted by the visits of Wesley in Australia, and he has a profession and a business out of pushing this sort of misinformation.
00:07:59.000Now... Wait a minute, he names the names of hospitals?
00:08:22.000I'm saying that we can equally name hospitals, we can equally name doctors, and we can equally name patients.
00:08:28.000Where the converse has taken place, and we do do this.
00:08:32.000So it's very well, I'm sure there are...
00:08:35.000Our examples on both sides of this fence, and quoting of examples is not what we need to do.
00:08:40.000What we need to do is to look at the theory, to look at the principles behind that practice, and say, do we want choice or don't we want choice?
00:08:47.000Do you want the choice, when your suffering is so great, do you want the choice to be able to end it or not?
00:08:53.000Now you can answer that question to me.
00:08:57.000Well, I know that my grandfathers didn't take that way out, and I know that other members of my family didn't, and one of my grandfathers... Would you condemn them if they did?
00:09:06.000Well, people just didn't do this in the past.
00:09:09.000Well, they do it now, and do we condemn them, is the question.
00:09:12.000My point is, is that the government worldwide, and you can say that's not true, I've seen the evidence that the government's pushing where they decide.
00:11:18.000Um, the other thing that I have, uh, I've had in a past experience to want to die myself, but then turn around the next day and was glad I wasn't dead.
00:11:30.000And then the question that I really have is, have you investigated the insurance, the life insurance?
00:11:38.000Most of these policies won't pay for suicide.
00:11:43.000Yes, I'm not totally familiar with the situation in the US.
00:11:48.000In Australia, once the 13-month period is up, life insurance does pay out on cases of insurance, and that's certainly the case in the UK too.
00:11:57.000Look, I couldn't comment on the situation in America.
00:11:59.000My understanding was that suicide is certainly no preclusion to life insurance after the period of 13 months, which is a normal time.
00:12:11.000Does that answer your question, Alice?
00:12:34.000I mean, I don't know about Australia, but here in the U.S., I've actually seen quite a push by a large camp in and out of government for this.
00:12:41.000There's certainly another large camp that is against it.
00:13:13.000I just wanted to comment that I'm... I want a choice.
00:13:17.000My dad happened to be progressive in emphysema and they took him off water and food and They gave him painkillers and he was gone in three days.
00:13:28.000And it was painful to watch for those three days.
00:14:22.000And to tell you the truth, it was painful to sit with my dad for three days.
00:14:25.000It was better I suppose than sitting at home with him and watching him go through something because they did give him quite a few doses of morphine.
00:14:35.000But he would have rather had the choice.
00:14:51.000And this is a debate that has to happen, folks, because it's going on worldwide, and I'm here to tell you government, especially in Northern Europe, is enthusiastically behind it, and people are there having to carry cards around their wallets saying, don't kill me.
00:15:10.000I mean, This is one of these stories which is taken off and swept and publicised by people like Wesley Smith, that there are people carrying cards.
00:15:18.000Yeah, there are some people carrying cards, but there's a whole lot more people carrying cards saying, I want choice.
00:15:23.000And it's true that in Holland and in Belgium they have that choice, but they don't have it in France or in Germany.
00:15:29.000They don't have it in England, so it's not exactly as if it's a groundswell, again, of change happening over there.
00:15:35.000Well, Doctor, I've got a bunch of callers here, and I just want to take three more.
00:15:38.000John, Rose, and Scott, and then we'll let you go, and I appreciate all the time and the websites.
00:15:45.000But I want to bring a point up to you.
00:15:48.000I was shocked whenever I mentioned what Wesley Smith and others were saying, and you said, well, that's his opinion, or what he's saying, or disinformation, or whatever.
00:15:58.000I said, wait a minute, the Wall Street Journal isn't going to let him name doctors, name hospitals, name names of people, because I'm in radio.
00:16:05.000I can't get up here and say something that is blatantly not true, because we'll get sued.
00:16:24.000I didn't say there was anything bad with him showing examples, and I don't even dispute his examples.
00:16:28.000What I'm saying is that there are equal examples of the converse, where people are being prolonged, they're having their lives extended when they don't want it, they're being forced not to have options, they're being told that they can't have the drugs they want to end their life.
00:16:42.000Now we can quote the doctors, we can quote the patients, and we can quote the hospitals.
00:16:46.000Nothing wrong with Wesley doing that, but let's be fair about this and say that this is not the answer, simply to quote one side.
00:17:06.000Because you said, I said, he gives all these examples, they wouldn't let him do this, because of liability, if these examples were not accurate and true and had been checked out by the newspapers, and you said, well, you know, I don't think, you know, we should give examples, I think it's bad what he's doing, we need to look at the theory.
00:17:21.000Now that's almost an exact quote, because I've got a good memory here, and it was just 15 minutes ago.
00:17:46.000No, I was saying this guy's got his evidence.
00:17:49.000You had impugned what Leslie Smith was saying, Doctor, and I've been very polite with you, and I was trying to find out exactly what you're saying.
00:17:56.000I was not coming at this from a destructionary, red herring level.
00:19:05.000If that happened in the way you describe, of course, it's a disgrace.
00:19:07.000chair. They found her three days, her daughter found her three days later in a sitting in
00:19:12.000an easy chair with a cigarette burned through her hand and holding family pictures. So we
00:19:16.000suspect that we don't know that it was a euthanasia, probably just took some pills.
00:19:22.000Yeah, look, if that's tough, if that happened in the way you describe, of course, it's a
00:19:26.000disgrace. And obviously it's something that no one would condone.
00:19:29.000Well, how do you feel about all the cures for cancer that are censored and the fact
00:19:33.000that the government's pumping out these genocide programs with all their medical experiments?
00:19:39.000Well, I don't see much evidence that they're pumping out their enthusiasm towards helping people, giving people the choices about ending their life.
00:19:47.000But, I mean, obviously there are better cancer treatments available now, and there are better treatments for HIV and maybe AIDS and maybe Your mother-in-law would have benefited had she stayed alive long enough to develop or to experience some of these better treatments.
00:20:02.000Well, we know that mycoplasma, the main symptom of AIDS, is a pentagon bioweapon and a Gulf War illness that all the troops in Desert Storm 1 got is genetically spliced with the AIDS virus to make the bacteria more deadly.
00:20:44.000I was going to say that insurance companies would probably go along with this because if you had a protracted disease that lasted for a long time, the insurance company would probably pay off or pay somebody to give you euthanasia to keep from having to put out all your medical bills.
00:21:00.000But I want to ask the doctor, does he believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?
00:21:06.000Yes, look, it's a simple question, Rose.
00:21:13.000Well, I tell you, it's a shame and disgrace with a doctor having the ability to cure people that you would go the way you're going and play God within yourself.
00:21:26.000Well, I don't see it as playing God, giving people choice.
00:21:30.000Well, God gives life and God takes life, and I don't think people, it's the mind-numbed robots running around here that people can brainwash so easily.
00:21:41.000Look, that's a very valid position, Rose, and I don't argue with you, I just have a different one.
00:21:46.000Well, Dr. Nietzsche, look, What about this euthanasia being institutionalized for the general public with the elites getting access to the real developments in science.
00:22:00.000There's a lot of evidence showing that they're suppressing some of the real live extension technologies.
00:22:05.000And then kind of having like a Logan's Run type society.
00:22:09.000Couldn't this put a damper on newer medical developments by making a large area of the market of healthcare becoming euthanasia?
00:22:19.000I mean, I can see the line you're putting here and I think we have to be pretty aware of it.
00:22:24.000I mean, elites in society that get access to the best new treatments and the rest who don't is a real concern.
00:22:31.000I mean, I suppose I think that what we've got right now...
00:22:34.000Is that the elites in society get access to the drugs that can give them a peaceful death.
00:22:38.000I mean I can get them because I'm part of an elite and you might be able to get them but most people out there can't go out and get the best drug to give you a peaceful death because they're not part of that elite.
00:22:47.000The good thing about legislation such as we see in countries like Holland is that it broadens it out for the whole community to have choice and so it's an equitable and just change that we could benefit from.
00:22:59.000I mean, you admit some of them have the cards in their back pocket saying, don't kill me.
00:23:03.000If everything's so perfect, why would they have those cards in their back pocket?
00:23:06.000Well, I guess, of course, some people have got those cards, but I think there's an awful lot of people that have got cards in their pocket saying, I want choice.
00:23:13.000I mean, you can't just drag out a small example and say that that proves anything.
00:23:17.000Well, I mean, we've had a 60-minute special about five years ago in this country, where they admit that hospitals could revive you, you're still alive, but they want your organs, so oops, you don't get the care.
00:23:28.000It's a very dangerous, slippery slope, doctor.
00:23:32.000Well, I mean, that's your position there, but I mean, it's not my position, and all I can tell you in this interview is that's not what I think.
00:23:51.000I'm for a choice to have a right to die, because I've seen other people in a lot of pain.
00:24:03.000One thing that scares me about this is before Clinton was elected him and his wife trying to push socialized medicine, which I believe one day will come about with this new surgeon they have in the House majority talking now.
00:24:18.000I mean, I see the medical rising on the road.
00:24:20.000What I'm scared of is to save money that they're going to put us to sleep without a choice.
00:24:26.000If you have your organs They give away?
00:24:41.000I mean, most people I know have really bad heart attacks.
00:24:43.000Their heart stops, they get them started, they live another 25 years.
00:24:47.000This is dangerous, and just quietly, while the government says they're against euthanasia, they're really setting it up to the bioethics boards.
00:24:54.000How do you respond to that, Dr. Nietzsche?
00:24:56.000Well, look, this is an assertion and I don't see evidence of that.
00:24:59.000So, I mean, it's your particular position.
00:25:04.000I find that there's no great groundswell towards this.
00:25:07.000We find we have to battle to get the most basic human choices and human rights established in medical environments.
00:25:14.000People typically don't have that choice.
00:25:15.000There's no enthusiasm to give them that choice, certainly not in a legal sense.
00:25:19.000People get it usually through the back door, a little bit like abortion was 25 years ago in our country, where Where you didn't get an abortion unless you were very wealthy or very well connected.
00:25:30.000Now, of course, in our country, at least, abortion is available to all if they want it.
00:25:35.000And that's a choice and we are happy about that.
00:26:27.000That which kills us makes us stronger, I guess.
00:26:30.000Well, that's a variation, but there you go.
00:26:33.000Okay, take care and thanks for joining us, and I hope you change your mind because I think that you're clouded and I think you're blinded here.