Chapter
Euthanasia: the Australian Experience (IN: Suicide and Euthanasia in Older Adults: a Transcultural Journey, edited by D De Leo)
Goldney R
After providing definitions of actions that are sometimes subsumed under the broad term euthanasia, this review examines attitudes of health professionals to euthanasia in Australia over the last 12 years in order to give an indication of the social/medical environment in which a law permitting this practice arose. Then it provides a chronology of events, both leading to the enactment of the law & to its overturn. Clinical information about those who died under this law will then be provided. Finally, comment is made about the whole experience, focusing particularly on the question posed by Battin (1998): “Physician-Assisted Suicide: Safe, Legal, Rare?”. (18 refs.)