Page 3215 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 1994
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If you have had a medical and establishment-type education, you will see most medical treatment as being beneficial. If you have studied the medical reform areas, as I have, and if you have spoken to a great number of health practitioners, you will find a great deal to suggest that much medical treatment is interventionist and does not do the patient any good whatsoever. Research that I have seen shows that around the world where doctors go on strike the death rate drops. It is a very interesting point. There were two occasions when I pulled people out of hospital the night before an operation and got them health care - - -
Mr Connolly: Dennis, we might have a job for you, clearing up the waiting lists.
MR STEVENSON: The Health Minister says that he might have a job for me, reducing the waiting lists. I do not doubt that you could reduce the waiting lists of people wanting medical treatment if you explained what a lot of it does. We have spoken in this debate about people's right to be informed. That was one of the points that I brought up last week. In this Bill it says that the person must be informed of the side effects, or the ramifications, of removing medical treatment; but, as I suggested last week, the only information that they are going to get is that which the medical people agree with. They are not going to get the full information.
I pulled two people out of hospital. They were in a different State from me at the time. It may seem funny; but one of them would be dead now if I had not done it.
Mr Humphries: How do you know?
MR STEVENSON: Because when I got there the person had given up the will to live. I was in Victoria. I went up to Sydney. It was an elderly person, who had given up the will to live. They had been hooked up to everything that you could imagine. It was the usual critical treatment that someone gets in order to monitor their various life functions. I will make a very interesting point in a moment as to what should be done and why it should be done. There are many cases where someone goes to hospital and, because of the impersonal nature of the treatment, quite often they feel more like an object. This person had given up the will to live. They were actually going to have their gall bladder removed because they had gallstone problems. While it may seem unusual to a number of members, I do not believe that someone will remain alive if they do not want to be alive. If someone has given up the will to live, I do not believe for a second that you can keep that person's body alive. If you believe that man is an animal, or just a body, you might think that you can keep a person alive; but not if you acknowledge that there is something of spiritual importance in the person. I see that this is quite humorous to some of the members here, and I think that is of concern.
Mr Lamont: Not at all, Dennis.
MR STEVENSON: It was about seven years ago that I pulled this person out of hospital in Sydney. They did not have the operation. Allowing for the fact that they are quite elderly, their health now, compared to that of most people of their age, is very good indeed. Actually, I did it again. Someone else was going to have their gall bladder removed. They were actually yellow - a very interesting colour. I was told that, if they
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