X-Message-Number: 6698
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 08:03:50 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: Australia

The Australian media has carried many reports of Max Bell's death. The
following is from 'The Australian' Monday August 5, by Maria Ceresa.

DEATH REKINDLES EUTHANASIA FIGHT

The terminally ill taxi-driver who wanted to be the first man to die under
the Northern Territory's voluntary euthanasia laws, Max Bell, has died from

his illness in Broken Hill amid claims by his doctor that the law is unworkable.

Dr Philip Nitschke said yesterday Bell's death in the palliative care
section of Broken Hill Base Hospital on Friday was proof that the world's
first voluntary euthanasia law was inoperable.

"It is a cruel joke", Dr Nitschke said. "They (the NT Government) made the
law so safe that it is unworkable, certainly in Max's case.  Max was
obviously the sort of person the law was designed to help.  Blind Freddy
could see that he was terminally ill but even he couldn't get the signatures
needed under the Act."

The NT Minister for Health, Mr Burke, yesterday defended the law which
requires the signatures of two doctors resident in the Territory.

"I am saddened by Mr Bell's death and saddened also that his death has been
made a public issue," he said.  "The law is safe, operable, compassionate
and of the highest standard.  It is designed to be a private act and it is
Dr Nitschke's job and other doctors' job to work within those guidelines."

Dr Nitschke, who was with Bell, 66, until his death, rejected claims that
the glare of publicity had lost Bell the chance to die under the Rights of
the Terminally Ill Act.  Dr Nitschke said Bell "to the very end" was asking
to die with a lucid mind but instead died heavily sedated.

Bell, who had stomach cancer, drove from his Broken Hill home to Darwin,
arriving one week before the Act became operational on July 1.  His hopes to
die under the Act were scotched after he could not find a second doctor
willing to help after further regulations required the doctor to be a
specialist and resident in the Territory.


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