Page 2877 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 September 1994
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the right to grant a power of attorney, which can be granted only by an adult person of sound mind. "Being of sound mind" is a term that is represented in many facets of the law; so that is not a difficult issue to define. This right can be exercised only in the event that the grantor of that power of attorney becomes incompetent. Obviously, those sorts of things are important to a lot of people.
It is interesting to note that, where this type of Bill has been brought in, not an awful lot of people use living wills, advance directives, or whatever we want to call them; but they are very important to those people who want them. I do not think that it is appropriate not to give them that right. A number of doctors from various avenues of medicine came before the committee. Their concern was that, as the law progresses and as society becomes more and more litigious, it becomes more difficult for them to do what they have always done and continue to do; that is, to alleviate pain and suffering and to do what they believe is best for the patient. I stress the words "they believe". This Bill at least balances that and emphasises what they believe and, at the same time, what the patient believes is right for the patient.
We have seen a number of cases - some of the most famous have been overseas - where relatives have disagreed and have not been willing to allow the "plug to be pulled" on a patient who is brain dead, who is just a vegetable. I think you could get into a fairly interesting argument, as we did on the committee, about what actually constitutes life. This Bill does not get into that area at all; but attempts to allow the patient, quite definitely, to state what they want, when they are of sound mind. It provides for a person who is 18 years or older, who is of sound mind, who is informed of the nature of the illness, alternative forms of treatment and the consequences of remaining untreated, and who makes a decision, voluntarily and without inducement or compulsion, that he or she wants to refuse medical treatment to direct that it be withdrawn. I do not think anyone would argue that that is an appropriate approach. Almost every doctor that appeared said that this sort of thing was happening every day; but they were not confident that, with the law being as it is, they were not open to being sued, as has happened overseas. I do not believe that anybody would swap with a doctor in that position. I think that this legislation goes a long way to overcoming those sorts of problems.
Mr Connolly brought up as well the issue of pain and suffering, which is covered in the Bill. I will be supporting Mr Connolly's amendment to the Bill, because, as Mr Connolly rightly said, one thing that the committee was very definite about was that nothing in this Bill changes the intent from curing pain and suffering to producing death. It must be very clear that that is the case. Mr Connolly's amendment, while achieving the same ends, certainly makes it just that much clearer for those people who have a problem with that. I do not think anybody would believe that a patient should go through unnecessary pain and suffering; but I see it, and when I was practising pharmacy more often I saw it all the time, because doctors were not willing to operate at the perimeter of safety, as far as the law went, particularly those who were not specialists in the area.
So, time and again, you see doctors underdosing terminally ill patients, not because they do not care - the doctors care a lot - but because of that very difficult issue of knowing when morphine actually kills a terminally ill patient or brings forward death and when it alleviates pain. What this Bill does is state categorically that, when a professional acts in
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