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Andrew Denton investigates the stories, moral arguments and individuals woven into discussions about why good people are dying bad deaths in Australia.
Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying law came into effect in June 2019. The first of its kind in Australia and touted as the most conservativ...
When Victoria’s VAD law was passed in 2017, it was touted by Premier Daniel Andrews as ‘the most conservative in the world’. This was true....
Whether it is through the words of the pope, his representatives the bishops and archbishops, or its surrogates in the medical profession, t...
The assisted dying debate in Australia has revealed two parallel universes. The conservative Christian universe, which believes our lives be...
At the heart of the political debate around voluntary assisted dying lies palliative care. On one side sits the argument that it can effecti...
In September 2020, as Tasmania’s Upper House prepared to debate an Assisted Dying bill, an article appeared on the online publication Mercat...
The key word in Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying law is the first one: ‘voluntary’. By law, any doctor, nurse, or other health profession...
There are many firsts in Betty King’s life. First female prosecutor for the state of Victoria. First female prosecutor for the Commonwealth...
Imagine turning up to work one day to discover flyers outside your office accusing you of being a ‘death peddler’ and an ‘Uber service for p...
So much was said during Victoria’s parliamentary debate about the people who would choose voluntary assisted dying, were it to be made legal...
No group has done more to persuade politicians to oppose assisted dying in Australia over the last 20 years than doctors. Citing their Hippo...
“Thou shalt not kill” - The Sixth Commandment Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying law was written to allow an eligible, terminally ill patie...
Warning: This episode of Better Off Dead contains references to suicide and self-harm. These include discussions about how some terminally i...
Spurred by watching his own father die painfully, in 2015 Andrew Denton set out to investigate – why are good people being forced to die bad...
Andrew Denton investigates the stories behind Victoria’s landmark Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) law: Who seeks to use it, and why? Who are...
20 years ago, four dying people were able to access the Northern Territory’s world-first law to help them die more mercifully, before the la...
Paul Russell — Photo: Supplied My search for the truth about assisted dying began when I was invited to attend the HOPE International Sympos...
Of all the arguments against assisted dying, the most heartless I’ve heard is this: Suicide is legal. Why do you need assistance to do somet...
The repeated call by opponents of assisted dying is that the elderly and the vulnerable must be protected from coercion. In this, they are r...
Assisted dying has no more committed opponent than the Catholic Church. They have thrown resources, and the full weight of their political i...
Ray Godbold is a palliative care nurse faced with terminal cancer – but he doesn’t want to die in palliative care. Robyn and Ray Godbold — P...
Associate Professor Richard Chye is the director of the Sacred Heart palliative care unit at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. A gifted physi...
Speaking with doctors in Belgium, the Netherlands and Oregon, I’d learnt that in those places, palliative care and assisted dying are seen a...
The success of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act – at 18 years, the world’s longest-running law of this kind – puts two things into sharp reli...
Shortly after arriving in Belgium, I learned of ‘Laura’ – a 24-year-old woman who had sought the right to be euthanised after years of unrel...
If there is an epicentre for anti-euthanasia sentiment, it’s Belgium – home to what are often described as the most liberal euthanasia laws...
For those who hold out the Netherlands as a textbook case of a ‘slippery slope’, they see a law originally designed to help the terminally i...
The Netherlands’ euthanasia laws are the longest-running in Europe. Surprisingly, the drive to create them didn’t come from politicians; it...
Opponents of assisted dying in Australia want to leave things as they are, because of the worrying things they claim might happen if we did...
According to Canadian anti-euthanasia campaigner Alex Schadenberg, Melbourne doctor Rodney Syme is a threat to society: a ‘cowboy’ and ‘the...
Liz is a dynamic 48 year-old businesswoman who’s dying of cancer. She wants to have a choice about how she dies because she’s been through p...
My name is Andrew Denton. I’m a writer and broadcaster who lives in Sydney, Australia. In October 2015, I delivered a public address arguing...
Introducing Better Off Dead – a new podcast from Andrew Denton and the Wheeler Centre. From early 2016, join us as Andrew investigates the s...