The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 1

r. f.v..'5 tf. '61 The Saints beat Collingwood. The Bulldogs beat Richmond. All the round 3 action: CPOHTSWEEK THE SUNDAY AGE Doctors defy deatti law 22 doctors say they have ended their patients' lives Melbourne GP tells how he gave lethal injections 1 By Darren Gray, medical reporter Honor: The original gentleman, Eric Pearce, receives his knighthood from the Queen.

Goodbye and God bless you, Sir Eric By Doug Aiton ') I TWELVE Victorian doctors have admitted killing terminally ill patients, knowing it was against the law. Another 10 doctors have admitted intentionally ending a patient's life but said they believed their actions were either within the law or not covered by specific legislation. The admissions were made in a 'Sunday Age' survey of 54 doctors who deal with terminally ill patients. One of the doctors who admitted participating in active euthanasia three times, the Carlton GP Dr Jonathan Anderson, said last week he knew he had technically committed murder. He said his duty to his dying patients outweighed any obligation to obey laws he believed were out of touch with reality.

Dr Anderson said the lack of a right-to-die law in Victoria made him sad and angry. "Angry that what is to me part of normal medical care has to be hidden behind closed doors. And sad, for the patient." Dr Anderson, 35, has a special interest in HIV-Aids cases. He said the three euthanasia cases he was involved in had been carried out in accordance with Dutch euthanasia guidelines. In each case, death was by lethal injection.

Dr Anderson said that, without a right-to-die law, Victorian doctors were involved in euthanasia in a clandestine fashion without The Anal exit: Dr Jonathan Anderson says he has given lethal injections to three dying patients. Picture: ROB BANKS proper regulations or a review process. In the survey, 34 doctors said they disagreed with the actions of the Federal Parliament in quashing the Northern Territory euthanasia law. The doctors surveyed work in Melbourne's major public hospitals, as well as private practice. They all deal with the sickest patients in the community and include cancer specialists, neurosurgeons, HIV-Aids doctors, intensive care and emergency doctors, infectious diseases doctors and general practitioners.

The doctors were evenly split on the subject of Victoria having its own right-to-die law, with 26 calling on the Kennett Government to introduce euthanasia legislation. Another 26 said Victoria should not have such a law: More than half of the doctors surveyed said they had rejected a request by a patient or the family of a patient to end a life. But 28 doctors said they would like the option of being able to legally request euthanasia if they were terminally ill themselves. Only nine of the doctors said they were prepared to appear on a national register of doctors willing to assist patients with euthanasia, while 35 said they would not. Four said they might.

Half the doctors said that medical and financial resources were being wasted on preserving life in patients who had no chance of recovery. One doctor said: "Millions of dollars (were) wasted in intensive care and heroics." The president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria, the consultant urologist Dr Rodney Syme, said the survey results added to the momentum the pro-euthanasia forces were gathering. "The figures are in line with all the surveys previously published," he said. The Northern Territory euthanasia advocate, Dr Philip Nitschke, said the 'Sunday Age' survey results were heartening. "It stands in some contrast to the results which are being touted around by the AMA, as being some meaningful representation of the medical profession in Australia.

They are quoting outrageously high condemnation by doctors to the concept of voluntary euthanasia." More reports, P2 Editorial, P18 'I gave him an injection to put him to sleep it was peaceful' By Darren Gray, medical reporter DEAR "I wish to sincerely thank you for your support for euthanasia and whether you would go one step further In my case it is urgent as I do not know when my luck will run out that it was to happen. He had been vaguely talking about it with his family, but he was to specifically stop discussing it. "I went around and visited him and with his lover holding his hand, he had a cup of tea first and I gave him an injection to put him to sleep first of all. "I then gave him something which stopped his heart within about 10 minutes (of the first injection) it was all very peaceful." The dying man's life had ended, as he wanted, without pain. But Dr Anderson had, not for the first time in his life, broken the law and killed one of his patients.

So who is Dr Jonathan Anderson and why is he willing to take such chances? Continued P2 terms of helping end the pain he was having." But there was no respite. "He said to me: 'Let's talk about how we can end Dr Anderson carefully discussed the request during many consultations over one month based on guidelines developed In the Netherlands, where euthanasia is widely practised. "I think it's very Important that I have to be comfortable with the Idea, as well as them being comfortable with the idea," says Dr Anderson. "So it's an informed patient choice, but it's also an informed doctor making the decision: that they will carry out the euthanasia. Because they'll be dead and I'U still be here to remember.

"It's a very big decision. It's something which every time it's happened has had a huge impact on, not just my professional feelings, but I think touches you personally. "It's also a great privilege that patients feel they know you well enough to be able to ask you to participate in their life to such a deep extent." The dying 38-year-old patient consulted a psychiatrist and was told he was very rational and not depressed. He also saw a hospital specialist to see if there was anything else that could be done. But the answer was no.

"So we decided, together, that he would end his life on a certain afternoon," Dr Anderson says. "I had to tell him that he couldn't tell anyone but the person who was to be with him, when it would happen. "And he wasn't to tell anyone i THE dying had taken a long time. Ever since he first contracted HIV, he had known it could end this way. But nothing had ever prepared him for this.

Two years of constant pain. The tiredness and diarrhoea never easing. His muscles just wasting away. Some mornings he could not get out of bed without help. "The impact on his lover and his family his family and he were very close and were living just around the corner was becoming intolerable," says Dr Jonathan Anderson.

"He started to say 'Jonathan, can you do anything to ease the And we talked about the different possibilities in and I will have to find Us. fl I a doctor who ERIC PEARCE dead? Surely not. Eric Pearce was meant to be elderly, always. But dead, never. Not only elderly, but comforting, dignified, serene, wry.

Not to mention that strange phrase we used to use with some awe: "Well-spoken." But Eric Pearce is dead. He died in his sleep in the early hours of yesterday morning. He was 92. In some ways, it was Eric Pearce who brought Melbourne into a new age, an age from which we were never going to escape. Television arrived in 1956.

We first saw Eric Pearce as compere of the opening of HSV-7, introducing Victoria to our future. He appeared at 10.15 on the evening of November 4, 1956, with the first television news bulletin that any of us ever saw. It might well have been radio, In those early days. There were no Utile local film, and if any film arrived from overseas we might see it a week late. Most of it was Just Eric, Juggling the matter of looking down at his typewritten bulletin and peering pleasantly into the camera.

No autocue in those days. The next year, 1957, the urbane Mr Pearce began reading the news on GTV-9. When you think of it, he wouldn't have been all that elderly then. He would have been about 51. But to us teenagers of the new age, Eric Pearce was the elderly gentleman who brought us the news each night and all of us secretly wished we spoke like he did.

We wouldn't dream of admitting it, any more than we'd admit that we'd really rather wear our hair as long as Bobby Driscoll did when playing Jim Hawkins in 'Treasure Island'. These were the years of the hated Cold War with the Iron Curtain countries. Winston Churchill had coined the phrase Iron Curtain after the war, which we happy 1950s children did not realise was so close on our heels. In the mop-up, the countries that fell behind Russia's dark shadow became the mysterious and sinister countries behind the Iron Curtain. China, almost equally feared, was Red China.

And with considerable horror we became part of the Russian Invasion of Hungary in 1956. We became part of it because later that year we hosted the Olympic Games and there was blood in the pool during the water polo match between Russia and Hungary. Here in Melbourne! In 1957, the Russians put the first man Into space In Sputnik One. We were both fascinated and terrified. Fascinated because the heavens had been opened; terrified because it was the Russians who conquered those heavens, not the Americans.

Eric Pearce told us all about these things. In fact, he calmed us down. I certainly found him soothing. Watching Eric present these alarming episodes In his silver voice, we felt less threatened. The reason was quite simple.

We were all perfectly aware that Eric would never allow things to get out of hand. Eric would protect us from these grim foreign events, even if there was blood In the Olympic Pool. These were the times dominated by the canned laughter shows from America. '1 Love Lucy, 'Sergeant BUko', The Nelsons' young Ricky Nelson with his real family in a slt-com), 'Father Knows Best. We grew up a little In 1957, when Graham Kennedy, a real live Melbourne person, leapt tfn to the screen with 'In Melbourne Tonight', and became our first local legend.

Through all this, there was Eric Pearce, never quite stern, never quite lecturing, but serious enough to make us sit still and pay attention to the serious part. Continued P2 YZJ I will break the law." 3 Vk A dying man' plea to the Premier, P2 Pope kill bid fails in Bosnia Doctor critical after shooting By Larry SchwarU Sarajevo, Saturday Taylor had treated the man in the past but was not his doctor. Two patients and a receptionist also in the rooms in Hastings, 60 kilometres south-east of Melbourne, during the shooting were unharmed. Detective Inspector John Noonan, of District, said a local man had entered the surgery, in Victoria Street, about 10.20am. He was known to medical staff but did not have an appointment.

He had been in the surgery a matter of minutes when Dr Taylor came out of his office after treating a patient. He said the man was thought to have said: "I'm going to kill you." The man fired at the doctor and then shot himself in the chest. bridge on the main boulevard, Mesa Selimovic. The explosives were removed just hours before the Pope's historic visit was due to begin. Sarajevo authorities declined to comment on whether the Pope's motorcade planned to pass along the road but visiting dignitaries usually use the boulevard to and from the airport.

Large numbers of policemen have been posted along the boulevard, which leads to the city centre. Sarajevo authorities and the Nato-led peace force had carried out elaborate security precautions for the visit. A series of bomb attacks on Catholic churches and Islamic mosques since February have raised fears for the Pope's safety. Reuter A MAN shot a doctor then turned his gun on himself in a Mornington Peninsula surgery early yesterday, according to police. Police said that Dr Andrew Taylor, 39, was shot three or four times in the legs and chest by the man, 45, who turned the large-calibre handgun on himself minutes Both men were in a critical condition in the Alfred Hospital last night.

Police placed a guard on the alleged gunman. A spokesman said charges would not be laid until police had interviewed the man. The incident is believed to have arisen after a dispute. Dr BOSNIAN police appeared to have foiled a plot to assassinate Pope lohn Paul II this morning when they discovered mines planted beneath a bridge only hours before his scheduled arrival. A UN spokesman said more than 20 mines were connected to a detonator and a remote control device.

"It seems a worker saw a person in that area this morning and advised the police," said Alex Ivanko, a spokesman for the United Nations mission. Bomb experts from Bosnia's Moslem-Croat federation believed the explosives were "freshly planted he said. A Bosnian police officer said the mines were found under the You can pay off your Home Loan sooner With extra repayments welcome any time Save more interest with fortnightly repayments I fit A. w'l'flia mm ran Weather They did it miu murigoKe misei 111 VeflT Visit your branch or VI 11 Fixed Dutch troop won the right to have thek tongue pierced after an army union ucceruty fought for a soMer1 right to wear a tongue stud wt)M on duty. The union said existing rulee do not forbM piercing one'a tongue became only visible Jewellery on a MfMIi I WW CmWWf Iw ba Victoria today Mainly fine and sunny.

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