Issues 'should be discussed'

The sentencing of a forensic scientist in an assisted-suicide case has reignited debate on the ethical and legal issues surrounding euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Sean Davison (50) was yesterday sentenced in the High Court at Dunedin to five months' home detention for "counselling and procuring" the suicide of his terminally ill mother Dr Patricia Davison.

• Hope his trial brings law change...

University of Otago School of Law dean Prof Mark Henaghan said the legal profession did not have much to go on.

"There's no perfect answer. If you leave things as they are, you end up with the problem [Dr] Davison faced, and that seems a little tough. The changing demographics of the New Zealand population ... means that these issues should be discussed.

"It's a question of whether we see [it] as sufficiently different to switching off life support or whether we move quickly to a much more liberal position based on autonomy, an individual's choice. To say that so long as an individual makes a choice, a doctor should act on it: that's quite a big leap."

Prof Donald Evans, of the University of Otago Bioethics Centre, believed doctors would not want the law to impose such a right on them.

"They fear that the doctor/patient relationship would be fundamentally altered where the doctor might be seen as an agent of death. The elderly, the severely disabled, the seriously ill, might be concerned that in times of scarce resources, they might well be considered as usefully dispensable by the medical profession."

- john.lewis@odt.co.nz