Philip Nitschke - Career

Career

Born in 1947 in rural South Australia, Nitschke studied physics at the University of Adelaide, gaining a PhD from Flinders University in laser physics in 1972. Rejecting a career in the sciences, he instead travelled to the Northern Territory to take up work with the Aboriginal land rights activist, Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji at Wave Hill.

After the hand-back of land by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, Nitschke became a Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife ranger. However, a serious accident to his foot saw him return to university, graduating from Sydney University Medical School in 1988.

Since assisting four people in ending their lives, Nitschke has provided advice to others who have ended their lives, mostly notably Nancy Crick, aged 69. On 22 May 2002, Crick, with over 20 friends and family (but not Nitschke) present, took a lethal dose of barbiturates, went quickly to sleep, and died within twenty minutes. Nitschke had encouraged Nancy Crick to enter palliative care, which she did for a number of days before returning home again. She had undergone multiple surgeries to treat bowel cancer, and was left with multiple, dense, inoperable bowel adhesions that left her in constant pain and diarrhoea and tied to the toilet, but she was not terminally ill at the time of her death. Nitschke said the scar tissue from previous cancer surgery had caused her suffering. "She didn't actually want to die when she had cancer. She wanted to die after she had cancer treatment," he said.

A 2004 documentary film, Mademoiselle and the Doctor, focused on the quest of a retired Perth professor, Lisette Nigot, a healthy 79-year-old, to seek a successful method of voluntary euthanasia. She sought advice from Nitschke. Nigot took an overdose of medication that she had bought in the United States and died, just before her 80th birthday. In a note to Nitschke, thanking him for his support, she described him as a crusader working for a worthwhile humane cause. "After 80 years of a good life, I have enough of it," she wrote. "I want to stop it before it gets bad."

Nitschke made headlines in New Zealand when he announced plans to accompany eight New Zealanders to Mexico where the drug Nembutal, capable of producing a fatal overdose, can be purchased legally. He also made headlines, even angering some fellow right-to-die advocates, when he presented his plan to launch a "death ship" that would have allowed him to circumvent local laws by euthanising people from around the world in international waters.

In the 2007 Australian federal election, Nitschke ran against the Australian politician Kevin Andrews in the Victorian seat of Menzies but was unsuccessful.

On 2 May 2009 Nitschke was detained for nine hours by British Immigration officials at Heathrow Airport after arriving for a visit to the UK to lecture on voluntary euthanasia and end-of-life choices. Nitschke said it was a matter of free speech and that his detention said something about changes to British society which were "quite troubling". Nitschke was told that he and his wife were detained because the workshops may contravene British law. However, although assisting someone to commit suicide in the UK was illegal, the law did not apply to a person lecturing on the concept of euthanasia, and Nitschke was allowed to enter. Dame Joan Bakewell, the British Government's "Voice of Older People", said the current British law on assisted suicide was "a mess" and that Nitschke should have been made more welcome in the UK.

In 2009 Nitschke helped to promote Dignified Departure, a 13-hour, pay-television program on doctor-assisted suicide in Hong Kong and mainland China. The program aired in October in China on the Family Health channel, run by the official China National Radio.