Philip Nitschke, the controversial euthanasia expert pictured alongside a British professor who killed herself this week, is little known in the UK. But the role in her death of his pro-assisted suicide group Exit International has raised questions about his influence over her decision.
This week police raided the Devon home of Avril Henry, 81, a member of Exit International, and seized drugs used for suicide. Four days later, Henry, a former professor of English medieval culture at the University of Exeter, was found dead in her home.
Henry had relinquished some of the illegal pills to police, but not her entire supply. Nitschke had been in contact with Henry, who was not terminally ill but had several illnesses, in the lead-up to these events.
The case has highlighted the role of the euthanasia advocate – seen cracking a few jokes about death in his show at the Edinburgh fringe comedy festival last year – in influencing the way some people choose to die.
Nitschke wrote the world’s first handbook on how to obtain the suicide drugs, and runs workshops for people interested in using them.
Henry’s situation shares similarities with that of Nigel Brayley, a suicidal Australian man with no terminal illness who killed himself at the age of 45 in May 2014 after accessing a powerful barbiturate which is lethal in large enough doses. He had been in discussion with Nitschke, who did not refer Brayley, who was healthy, to a psychiatrist during any of their interactions.
Instead, when Brayley emailed Nitschke to ask him if he wanted a copy of his suicide note, Nitschke responded: “Yes please”. These interactions were a fundamental breach of Nitschke’s hippocratic oath to “do no harm”, Australia’s medical regulators argued, when the case was exposed by the media last year. Nitschke disagreed, saying he was never acting as Brayley’s doctor.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency launched an investigation into Nitschke’s interactions with Brayley after they were revealed by the media, as well as his involvement with other patients, and began examining Nitschke’s professional conduct more broadly.
After a lengthy investigation, Nitshcke was offered an ultimatum: he could continue practicing as a doctor, but he could never advocate, promote or speak about euthanasia again. It would have spelt the end of his role as head of Exit International.
Nitschke, who had been practising as a doctor and the subject of controversy for 25 years, declined the offer in his typically brazen way. He burned his medical registration, posting the photos on Twitter for the public and his Exit International followers to see. He would never practise as a doctor again.
Australia, in any case, was too conservative in the eyes of Nitschke. Shunned by other euthanasia advocates, condemned by the psychiatric profession, and barred from practising as a doctor by the medical authorities, Nitschke had in recent years increasingly turned his attention to his second home in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, and to neighbouring countries, including the UK.
It wasn’t as though the people and doctors of Australia weren’t ready to discuss the idea of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide. The debate had progressed. Last year, the Victorian government launched an inquiry into end-of-life care, including decisions around death. Newspapers ran editorials urging the Commonwealth government to put the issue on its agenda, and the topic had also become an area of interest for local celebrities.
But almost all of them – the growing contingency of politicians, doctors, and advocates who were pro-euthanasia in Australia – purposely distanced themselves from Nitschke. As the public increasingly showed their readiness to discuss euthanasia, Nitschke pushed the bar further than the public was ready for.
In December, he told Guardian Australia that every citizen over the age of 70 should be issued with the barbituate used by Henry so they could kill themselves at the time of their choosing. He added that he would not necessarily stand in the way of a perfectly healthy person who decided they wanted to die. Suicide, he argued, could be a rational decision made by a wider group of people than just the terminally and seriously ill.
For this reason, Nitshcke rejected the role of psychiatrists in end-of-life decision making. Nitschke believed Brayley’s decision to die was a rational one, and this was the argument he put forward to the medical regulators.
He also believes the way Henry, who suffered chronic ear infections and tinnitus, high blood pressure that led to cardiac and renal problems, swollen feet, incontinence and urinary infections, was a victim of over-zealous authorities.
Of the raid on Henry’s home, Nitschke told Guardian Australia on Monday: “Police, claiming they were acting on information from Interpol, without knocking, kicked down the door of a retired 81-year-old English professor saying they were acting because they believed she was about to suicide.
“They then called in a psychiatrist, GP and social worker and questioned and interrogated the terrified woman for over six hours before finally leaving at 4am saying she had been assessed and ‘had capacity’ and would not be sectioned.”
He said they searched her house, took a bottle of an imported drug and arranged a temporary repair of the smashed door.
“This seems on the surface at least to be a significant abuse of power against a vulnerable elderly woman.”
Henry wanted to tell her story, Nitschke said. But days later, she was dead.
- In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.
