Claim response

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Patricia Flowers calls Margaret Somerville's arugments 'bullshit' on national television. Photo: ABC

Last week, Mr Xavier Symons published a defence of Professor Margaret Somerville, whose arguments against assisted dying were called ‘bullshit’ by Patricia Flowers on the ABC’s Q&A program. Symons and Somerville are colleagues at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the Catholic Notre Dame University of Australia.

Mr Symons made an important point: that a law about restricted self-choice for assisted dying is in no way comparable to the Nazi Germany euthanasia (or more correctly, eugenics) programme. While Prof. Somerville agrees that such comparisons are invalid, she nevertheless often mentions Nazi Germany as a ‘question’ when debating assisted dying. That’s a bit of a fudge.

And Mr Symons, in his defence of Prof. Somerville, offers some fudges of his own. While Dr Iain Brassington has offered a cool philosophical examination of Mr Symons’ opinion piece in a Journal of Medical Ethics blog, I’ll provide more of an evidential analysis.

Wrong on Dutch law and practice

Mr Symons said that euthanasia was legalised in the Netherlands in 2002. While technically that may be true, it's misleading. Assisted dying was actually made lawful in the Netherlands in 1982, after considerable debate and a number of court cases, when the Board of Procurators-General (the highest prosecutorial authority) formalised a set of conditions under which doctors would not be prosecuted for helping a patient die.

In practice, wider physician participation commenced in 1984 when the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) issued its own guidelines for clinical practice, based on the Procurators-General ruling, and grew to more than a thousand cases a year by the late 1990s.

It was in 2002 — when the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act came into effect — that the Dutch law on assisted dying changed from regulatory to statutory.

Mr Symons also claimed that since 2002, the “Dutch legislation [has] changed several times.” That’s not true: in fact, not one word of the Act has changed since it came into effect.

Nor has there been a “steady rate of increase” in the Dutch assisted death rate since 2002 “even when there was no legislative change” as he claimed. There has been an increase, but far from ‘steady.’ Rather, it’s a sigmoid (stretched-S) curve with very little initial increase, then increasing, and then levelling out again. It’s a pattern typical of human behaviour adoption, and has occurred in both Belgium and the Netherlands.

Selective Euro-evidence

Mr Symons also claimed “significant evidence from Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg” for his argued slippery slope. Yet he quotes percentages for only the Netherlands, correctly noting that assisted deaths increased from 1.3% of all deaths in 2002 to 3.7% in 2015.

Mr Symons doesn’t mention that:

  • the Dutch assisted dying rate was lower for a number of years after 2002 than before — as physicians and the public were still getting to grips with the new Act;
  • the Netherlands’ assisted dying rate dropped between 2014 and 2015;
  • the rate in Belgium (1.8% in 2015) is half the Netherlands’;
  • the rate in the Flanders (Dutch) north of Belgium (2.5% in 2015) is higher than in the Wallonia (French) south (0.87%), suggesting that higher rates may be a characteristic of Dutch culture;
  • the rate in Luxembourg, with very similar legislation, is a tiny one twentieth of the Dutch rate — 0.18% in 2014 (the most recent year of available data); or that
  • there is no evidence to date of the rate increasing in Luxembourg.
     

Selective North American evidence

While Mr Symons reports the Dutch rate as a percentage of all deaths, he reports his only other figures (for Oregon) as raw counts: rising from 16 in 1998 (before which assisted dying was entirely illegal) to 132 in 2015. (Actually, the final figure for 2015 was 135 cases.) What he fails to mention is that the Oregon rate in 2015 was 0.38% of all deaths, just one tenth of the Dutch rate. That is, the percentage is far less ‘impressive’ to his thesis and raises questions about ‘inevitable slippery slopes.’

The increase is hardly surprising given that when conduct is made newly lawful, only a few people might pursue it in its first year, with more people pursuing it seventeen years later. Even then, one hundred and thirty-five cases out of nearly thirty-six thousand deaths is hardly a “normalisation,” as Mr Symons argues.

He also argues that Quebec’s initial figures are “alarming,” without reporting the rate as a percentage of all deaths. Data from the first year (2015–16) indicates a rate of 0.74%, slightly lower than French-speaking Wallonia in 2015 (0.87%). (Half-way through the 2015–16 period, Canada’s Federal Parliament also passed an assisted dying law.)

The latest comparative data

The latest data on assisted death rates in Benelux and North America is shown in Figure 1. As I explain in one of the most detailed comparative analyses of lawful assisted dying practice conducted to date, it is likely that the higher rates are associated with Dutch culture.

adrates7jurisdictions.gifFigure 1: Assisted dying in Benelux and North America as a percentage of all deaths

Notes: Dutch cultures appear in orange. Flanders is the northern Dutch, and Wallonia the southern French, ‘half’ of Belgium.
Sources: Government statistics offices and assisted dying authority reports; Quebec, CBC News

The case of Vermont

In the USA state of Vermont (with an Oregon-like Act since 2013), a small number of people (38) have been prescribed lethal medication in the first three years. (Data is not available by year.) Assuming for the sake of argument that all of them took the medication (while Oregon and Washington data indicates that a third or more don’t), that would equate to an assisted dying rate of around 0.27% of all deaths as an annual average for 2013­–15.

Don’t mention Switzerland

Switzerland is perhaps the most ‘inconvenient’ case for slippery slope hypotheses, which might explain why assisted dying opponents usually avoid mentioning it. It has the world’s oldest assisted suicide law, in effect since 1942. It is also the least prescriptive: the only specific statutory requirement is that any assistance rendered must not be for reasons of self-interest. That’s it.

Surely a law in effect for 73 years and devoid of all the complex requirements of others would be the foundation for an out-of-control assisted dying rate, much higher than the Netherlands at 3.7%?

It isn’t. In 2015, the rate for Swiss-resident assisted deaths was 1.4%. The rate including foreigners — in other words, with a global population of potential ‘slippery slope candidates’ — was 1.7%. That’s less than half the Dutch rate.

Conclusion

To summarise, the lawful assisted dying rate varies widely between cultures, currently by a factor of twenty. Yet there’s one thing consistent amongst them all: the most common reason for pursuing an assisted death is advanced cancer.

Ultimately, the only thing Mr Symons’ argument establishes is that he prefers to negatively describe any use of a law of which he disapproves as “normalisation,” regardless of its usage rate. If this were not true it would be incumbent on him to nominate a non-zero assisted dying rate that he thinks acceptable, but not “normalised.”

To be sure, I agree with Mr Symons that it’s important to “review the hard facts” around assisted dying.

And yet, when he promised the reader that his “valid slippery slope” argument would be based on “compelling empirical” evidence, he made incorrect or misleading statements, provided cherry-picked morsels of data, and wrapped it all up in a loaded assumption. I think that Patricia Flowers would call that ‘bullshit.’


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Update: Margaret Somerville is now Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia.

In the previous video a claim by Catholic Professor of Ethics Margaret Somerville was rebutted: that the Dutch and Belgians seek health care in Germany because they fear being killed by their own doctors and without being asked. In this video, she furthers her bizarre claim by referring to Dutch and Belgian non-voluntary euthanasia rates as 'proof' of her border-crossing healthcare thesis.

However, her cherry-picked statistic establishes nothing, whereas her claim is contradicted by robust research, which I discuss in this video.

It's unclear why Professor Somerville seems to be unaware of or ignores readily-available yet contradictory evidence of central importance to her claim.

This 'non-voluntary slippery slope' claim is another one that's popular amongst campaigners against assisted dying.

 

Transcript

Neil Francis: In the last video, we established as false, Professor Margaret Somerville’s absurd claim of the Dutch going to Germany for health care because they feared being killed by their doctors. But she goes on.

Margaret Somerville: In actual fact they’ve got good reason to fear that, uh, there’s a minimum of, a minimum of 500 cases a year, of doctors who administer euthanasia to people in the Netherlands, where it’s legal, and the patient does not know they’re being given euthanasia, and has not consented to it. Some reports put the figure as high as 2000 cases a year.

Neil Francis: And she makes a similar case for Belgium. So let’s look at the empirical evidence.

Neil Francis: What she’s referring to is non-voluntary euthanasia, or NVE. It occurs in every jurisdiction around the world. A study published in 2003 found these rates. You’ll notice that Italy had the lowest and Belgium the highest NVE rates. And at the time of this study, which countries had legalised assisted dying?

Neil Francis: Switzerland had since 1942, and the Netherlands since 1982. But none of the others had. So the Swiss and Dutch NVE rates, with assisted dying laws, were lower than Denmark’s, without one. And the higher Belgian rate wasn’t caused by an assisted dying law, because none existed at the time.

Neil Francis: But did the Belgian and Dutch NVE rates go up when each country legalised assisted dying by statute in 2002? Here’s what happened in Belgium: the rate didn’t go up — it went down, and the drop is highly statistically significant.

Neil Francis: And in the time since Professor Somerville made her misleading claim, it’s remained lower.

Neil Francis: And here’s what happened in the Netherlands. This rate before the Act is around 1,000 cases a year, and this one after the Act is around 500, the rate that Professor Somerville refers to in her claim as “the minimum”. What she failed to mention is that since statutory legalisation of assisted dying, the Dutch NVE rate dropped, not risen, and to a similar level as the UK, the world’s gold standard for palliative care, and which has never had an assisted dying law.

Neil Francis: And since Professor Somerville made her misleading claim, it’s dropped even further.

Neil Francis: If Professor believes that she has verifiable empirical evidence to back up her claims, let her produce it for examination. Until then, her non-voluntary euthanasia “slippery slope ”is nothing more than fear-mongering innuendo.

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Professor Margaret Somerville makes an indefensible 'suicide contagion' claim.

Catholic ethicist Professor Margaret Somerville claims that every assisted suicide jurisdiction shows 'contagion' to the general suicide rate. The empirical evidence contradicts her claim.

Get the full report here.

Professor Margaret Somerville, currently Professor of Ethics in the School of Medicine at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia,[1] has enjoyed ongoing publication of her opinions, with few challenges published to date.

Back in 2007, Somerville, then a Professor of Ethics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, appeared as an expert witness in an Iowa District Court case. The court comprehensively rejected her testimony, determining that she:

“…specifically eschews empirical research and methods of logical reasoning in favour of ‘moral intuition.’ She has no training in empirical research…”

Professor Somerville, I argue, has again fallen short on empirical research and logical reasoning. To illustrate, I will analyse her claim, published in an opinion piece in ABC Religion and Ethics that:

“…the general suicide rate has increased in every jurisdiction that has legalized assisted suicide.

While her claim may be her own personal opinion, she has presented it expressly stating that she is a Professor of Ethics at her current university of employment, lending the claim perceived authority.

This report demonstrates how her claim and her defence of it are contradicted by multiple sources of empirical government and other primary research evidence. It also demonstrates that she failed to engage appropriate scholarly standards that require the active search for, acquisition and analysis of all reasonably available relevant data in an attempt to answer a particular question.

In making her claim, Prof. Somerville:

  • Cites ‘supportive’ data from lawful jurisdictions while overlooking other data, sometimes even in the same data set, that are inconsistent with her claim;
  • Cites as supporting evidence an econometric modelling study that did not find a statistically-significant relationship between assisted dying law and the general (non-assisted) suicide rate;
  • Fails to consider data from all jurisdictions with assisted suicide laws while making a claim about them all — overlooking Switzerland, whose empirical data is clearly at odds with her claim;
  • Repeatedly cites non-academic anti-euthanasia lobbyist Mr Alex Schadenberg (who also cites her) as a source of evidence for her claim and who in turn quotes a television source and another lobbyist’s opinion to underpin his own beliefs about ‘suicide contagion’; and
  • Conflates voluntary euthanasia (physician-administration) with assisted suicide (patient self-administration) such that her argument, at least in the context of Belgium and the Netherlands, is substantially about the novel concept of ‘euthanasia contagion’ rather than the more familiar ‘suicide contagion’ expression she uses.
     

These findings are consistent with the Iowa court’s ruling that Prof. Somerville sometimes relies on ‘moral intuition’ rather than sound empirical research and logical reasoning.

My report also draws a number of connections between those advancing misinformation on assisted dying ‘suicide contagion,’ and Catholic identity. Catholic identity is not a reason to reject arguments, but it does help identify the source of a majority of ‘suicide contagion’ misinformation.

Finally, I argue that the appropriate course of action for Prof. Somerville is to retract her ‘suicide contagion in every jurisdiction’ claim.

 

Get the full report here.


[1]   Not to be confused with another Professor Margaret Somerville, who is Director of the Centre for Educational Research at Western Sydney University.

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Update: Margaret Somerville is now Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia.

Catholic Professor of Ethics Margaret Somerville claimed in a University address that elderly Dutch people are fearful of being euthanased in nursing homes and hospitals and instead travel to Germany for health care.

She provided no sources or evidence for her claim.

Dr Els Borst, the Minister resonsible for the Netherlands' euthanasia law, reveals these claims about 'fear of being killed' in nursing homes as 'absolute lies.' Dutch Senator Heleen Dupuis confirms that it is untrue.

The claim is popular amongst opponents of assisted dying law reform. It raises questions about how a Professor of Ethics came to state is as authoriative fact.

Transcript

Neil Francis: Former Dutch Minister for Health, Dr Els Borst, shared an experience her Government had with the Vatican about assisted dying

Els Borst: Their journal, the Osservatore Romano, was writing, was publishing articles saying that in the Netherlands, people who went to a nursing home or an old people's home, didn't dare to do that any more because they were so afraid they would be killed by their doctor after a week or so.

Els Borst: And we were so angry about this, absolute lies, that we went together, to the Vatican, and we told them that if they didn't stop that sort of lies in their journal, that we would stop diplomatic relations with Vatican City.

Els Borst: We had an ambassador there, and my colleague the Minister for Foreign Affairs said, "I'll withdraw that ambassador and he'll never return."

Else Borst: And then it stopped.

Neil Francis: Well perhaps the Vatican did, but here's Catholic Professor of Ethics, Margaret Somerville.

Margaret Somerville: Old Dutch citizens are seeking admission to nursing homes and hospitals in Germany, which has a strict prohibition against euthanasia because of its Nazi past, and they're too frightened to go into nursing homes or hospitals in the Netherlands.

Neil Francis: I asked Dutch Senator, Professor Heleen Dupuis, about the claim.

Heleen Dupuis: OK, stupid. It is simply not true.

Neil Francis: It's time to stop spreading such fearmongering scuttlebutt.

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Update: Margaret Somerville is now Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia.

Catholic Professor of Ethics Margaret Somerville claimed in a University address that the Minister who brought in the Netherlands' euthanasia Act (that's Dr Els Borst), said that doing so had been "a serious mistake."

In an offence against scholalry standards, Prof. Somerville did not check her facts with the primary source before making the claim. I know, because I did. I interviewed Dr Borst in Utrecht: Prof. Somerville had not contacted Dr Borst, and Dr Borst stated clearly and without hestitation that she still thought it a good law.

Prof. Somerville instead chose to repeat scuttlebut circulating amongst assisted dying law reform opponents.

Transcript

Neil Francis: Before her death, I visited Dr Els Borst in Utrecht, to seek her current views about the Netherlands' euthanasia Act, which she introduced into the Dutch parliament, and which had been in effect for many years.

Voice of Neil Francis (interview): What are your feellings about the law?

Els Borst: I'm still very happy with it. I think we did the right thing there, also in the way we formulated it.

Neil Francis: But despite the clarity of Dr Borst's continued support for the law, Professor Somerville claimed the opposite in an address at the University of Tasmania.

Margaret Somerville: The Minister who was responsible for shepherding through the legislation that legalised euthanasia in the Netherlands admitted publicly that doing so had been a serious mistake."

Neil Francis: Oh dear. I showed Dr Borst the video of Professor Somerville's claim, and here's her response.

Els Borst: I know that story. I'd like to meet this Margaret S... what's her name?

Vice of Neil Francis: Margaret Somerville

Els Borst: ... well maybe she wouldn't listen anyway.

Neil Francis: The public have a right to ask why Professor Somerville chose to spread scuttlebut, instead of checking her sources in a proper, scholarly fashion.

Visit the YouTube page.

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Dr Megan Best and the AMA profoundly misrepresent what this research says.

In my report about Dr Megan Best misreporting research findings about assisted dying practice in Belgium, I said that I would ask the Australian Medical Association (AMA) to publish a correction statement. I did just that, posting a courteous notice explaining the misinformation and requesting the correction, as a comment to their online article. What happened next was supremely revealing about how the conservative medical establishment opposes your right to choose assisted dying. I expose six reprehensible aspects of Dr Megan Best’s ‘expert’ opinion and MJA InSight’s response to my report.

 

Response 1—Try to bury the correction request

How did the AMA respond? Well, first of all, they simply deleted my post from the Medical Journal of Australia article (in MJA InSight).1

Subsequently, AMA member Dr Rosemary Jones posted my advice and request for correction. They dared not delete the post of a member, because Dr Jones’ post remains and MJA InSight have now responded… in a fashion.

Response 2—Plead it’s not the AMA

First up, Cate Swannell, editor of MJA InSight as well as “MJA news and online,” wrote that MJA InSight is:

“…editorially independent from the AMA and the AMA does not influence our content and editorial decisions in any way, shape or form … Thanks.” — Cate Swannell

It would be fair to take Ms Swannell’s word for it that the AMA doesn’t make a habit of sticking its nose into individual items at the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA). But consider this: MJA, of which MJA InSight is a part, is published by a wholly owned subsidiary of the AMA. That is, even in the absence of direct influence, one might reasonably expect that the AMA has broader, long-term influence over “content and editorial decisions.” After all, a core purpose of establishing a wholly-owned subsidiary is to help promote owner’s interests (which at present are officially and trenchantly opposed to the legalisation of assisted dying).

Those interests are further intertwined at DoctorPortal which is co-owned and operated by the AMA and its entity that publishes MJA. The portal includes the ‘MJA Bookshop’ where doctors must log in using their AMA credentials to obtain discounts.

MJA InSight is in real and practical terms a publication of the AMA.

Refresher: The original allegations

Before we cover the further AMA responses, let’s remind ourselves of the ‘expert opinion’ the AMA obtained from Dr Megan Best about Belgian assisted dying practice as published in MJA InSight:

“I am concerned by the reduction in referral to palliative care doctors and specialists in the euthanasia approval process, as GPs are less likely to know whether or not the suffering can be alleviated – the keystone of the act,” she said.

“This is a weakening of the due process of the act and suggests that the ‘safeguards’ are seen more as a barrier to be overcome than an opportunity to improve life to the extent that euthanasia is no longer necessary.” — Dr Megan Best

Response 3—Confirm the ‘cherry-picking’ misrepresentation

Here’s how Sarah Colyer, author of the article in which Dr Best’s nonsense was quoted, responded to Dr Rosemary Jones’ objections:

“…there are two findings related to the involvement of palliative care doctors in the study. First, the study found palliative care physicians were less likely to be the legally-required ‘second doctor’ to sign off on the decision for euthanasia, as more GPs took on the role.” — Sarah Colyer

What a profound fudge. The paper does not say that. There is a notional mathematical decrease in palliative care (PC) ‘sign-offs,’ but with a p value of 0.3 it is not in the slightest bit statistically significant. In other words, it is not possible to validly assert that it became “less likely.” And this is the reason that the researchers correctly didn’t draw such an inference in their discussion and conclusions.

This is extraordinary. In its defence, this AMA publication confirms and defends that Dr Best had cherry-picked a supposed trend with no statistical significance and which seems to (but doesn’t) support opposition to assisted dying law reform, while utterly failing to mention a highly significant trend (p = 0.001) in the opposite direction, present in the very same table of data (Table 3 of the cited research paper).2

While the original MJA article reported on both data series, it failed to identify that one was in no way statistically significant while the other was highly so.

Response 4—Execute an impressive flip-flop

“Second, and as Sarah Edelman is quoted saying, 39% of patients had contact with palliative care teams in the lead up to euthanasia (but these doctors were not necessarily involved in sign-off).” — Sarah Colyer

Both Dr Megan Best, and Sarah Collyer in defence, express concern about what they see as the insufficient ‘signing off’ or approval of assisted dying by Belgian PC specialists. Yet Palliative Care Australia explicitly states that:

“The practice of palliative care does not include euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. Palliative care does not intend to hasten or postpone death.” — Palliative Care Australia3

So on the one hand Australia's national PC body demands that PC have nothing whatever to do with assisted dying, while an Australian PC specialist (who is opposed to assisted dying) demands that it must: not just ‘incidental’ involvement to ensure the patient is well-informed as to what PC may offer, but to directly insert itself in the assisted dying approval process.

What an impressive ‘must not, yet must’ flip-flop.

Response 5—Confirm bias about consultations

Sarah Colyer goes on to say:

“Although this latter figure is an increase from 33%, the article makes clear that this is more about palliative care doctors being ‘notified’ than necessarily having any professional input into the decision-making process.” — Sarah Collyer

If my point 3 above exposed a ‘profound’ fudge, this is a spectacular one. Indeed it’s utter fiction. Nowhere in the cited research report do the data or authors suggest in any way that PC teams were merely ‘notified.’ They were consulted. The word is used explicitly in no fewer than seventeen times specifically in relation to PC. What is a professional ‘consultation’?: “a meeting or discussion to obtain advice.”

To suggest that these are mere ‘notifications’ is absurd: why would a physician even bother to formally ‘notify’ other relevant carers if he or she had no intention of the notification having any meaningful consequence?

The only outcome of this ‘notification’ fiction is to make Belgian physicians seem careless or disinterested—a shabby and biased approach to describing overseas colleagues who engage in lawful conduct of which the commentators (at least, Dr Best) personally disapprove.

Response 6—Demonstrate fundamental ignorance about research

Remember that Dr Best complained about her perception of a low assisted dying PC consult rate as obstructing the “opportunity to improve life to the extent that euthanasia is no longer necessary”. Sarah Colyer defends and amplifies the ‘low consult rate’ message of the Belgian research:

“Although Dr Edelman and the study authors said this [increase in palliative care consults] was a positive development, Dr Best and another respected palliative care doctor who provided background for the article said it was still overall a very low rate of palliative care involvement.” — Sarah Colyer

These remarks reveal a deep ignorance about research evidence. The reported data the 'experts' criticised was only in respect of PC involvement after a request for assisted dying. It did not include any PC consults that occurred in the patient’s care trajectory prior to the assisted dying request. (Indeed, the assisted dying request may in some cases have developed as a consequence of palliative futility.) The research authors are even explicit about this:

“The reporting form does not record whether patients have previously received palliative care.” — Dierickx, Deliens, Cohen et al2

Contrary to Best and Colyer’s indefensible assumption, empirical research evidence indicates that around 74% of assisted dying cases in 2013 at least in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking larger half of Belgium, involved specialist PC services.4 The Dierckx et al2 data is also in respect only of PC-primary-specialist consults. Many Belgian physicians, especially but not only many oncologists, themselves hold PC sub-specialty endorsements, yet only their primary organ or disease specialty is recorded on the report forms.

The 74% PC consult figure of course by definition excludes those who made a request but who subsequently rescinded it (i.e. not captured in the data because there was no assisted death). The patient may have rescinded their request as a consequence of PC consultation. Other published scientific research indicates that in 2013 around 18% of Belgian assisted dying requesters revoked their request.5

Indeed, more than half (59%) of Belgian patients making a request in 2013 died before the consulting team had reached a decision, and 7.5% of requests were denied by physicians because the patient wasn’t terminally ill even though that is not a requirement of the law.5 The wider evidence suggests that Belgian doctors remain conservative and cautious rather than pursuing poor practice as Dr Best and Ms Colyer invalidly attempt to conclude.

What is “very low”?

Just for good measure, let’s compare a Belgian assisted dying 74% PC consult rate with the general PC rate in Australia (where assisted dying is illegal). There’s precious little data around and Palliative Care Australia didn’t respond to two requests. [Addendum 5th Oct: Palliative Care Australia responded but advised that to the best of their knowledge the specific statistics were not available.] The closest relevant official data I could find with hours of intensive research, reports that in 2011-12, 39.5% of hospital inpatients who died received PC consults.6 Of course, PC consults can only be relevant in respect of non-sudden deaths because there’s no opportunity to make such decisions in a relatively sudden death. About two thirds of all deaths are not ‘sudden,’ so let’s adjust up the original figure to reflect that, resulting in a hospital non-sudden-death PC consult rate of around 60%.

Half (50%) of all deaths in Australia occur in hospitals, 38% in residential and community (i.e. other institutionalised) care, and just 12% elsewhere (mostly at home).6 Let’s say for the sake of argument (and lack of data) that the PC consult rate for other institutions is similar to hospitals. Let’s also assume that of (two thirds non-sudden) deaths at home, all of them received palliative care consults. That raises the Australian PC consult rate to around 68% of all non-sudden deaths. Maybe the real figure is somewhat higher or lower.

But it is wholly incorrect to conclude, given Belgium’s Flemish PC consult rate for assisted dying at 74%, that the Belgian palliative care consult rate is “very low” as the two ‘expert’ PC commentators wrongly assert and Sarah Colyer reports on the basis of data about a different measure.

Conclusion

The AMA widely promotes evidence-based decision making, but it has comprehensively offended its standard in regard to this issue. The AMA’s response to this further critique will give the Australian public a strong indication as to its intent, ethics and credibility. Of course, I'll let you know how they respond.

As for Dr Megan Best offering such ill-considered and evidence-defying nonsense as ‘expert opinion,’ I would hope that she permanently retires from offering commentary.

Now at least you can see the kinds of rubbish arguments that the conservative medical establishment uses to justify opposing your right to consider an assisted death.

 

Inexpert opinion via the AMA’s MJA

Through its MJA InSight article and response, the AMA has published and defended misinformation against assisted dying, a choice that the overwhelming majority of Australians want on the table, but which the AMA explicitly opposes.

  1. First up, the AMA tried to bury my critique of its incoherent and incorrect ‘expert opinion’ by deleting the critique.
  2. Then it tried to argue that its published misinformation was nothing to do with the AMA.
  3. It confirmed that it had reported a cherry-picked non-significant ‘trend’ from a research paper’s data that was, coincidentally, consistent with AMA opposition to assisted dying, while omitting to mention a highly statistically significant trend—in the same table of data—that contradicted the AMA and commentators’ stance.
  4. Its article and critique response argued that PC must be involved in approving assisted dying requests at the same time that Palliative Care Australia insists that assisted dying is nothing to do with PC.
  5. It fictionally asserted that the Belgian research paper suggested PC specialists were merely ‘notified,’ while the research paper said no such thing and referred repeatedly to ‘consultation.’
  6. It ignorantly claimed that the Belgian PC consult rate was “very low” (when it isn’t) on the basis of what happened only after an assisted dying request, ignoring that PC consults can and do occur before an assisted dying request.

 

References

  1. Colyer, S 2016, Belgian euthanasia model splits Aussie experts, MJA InSight, viewed 26 Sep 2016, https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2016/37/belgian-euthanasia-model-splits-aussie-experts/.
  2. Dierickx, S, Deliens, L, Cohen, J & Chambaere, K 2016, 'Euthanasia in Belgium: Trends in reported cases between 2003 and 2013', CMAJ, September 12, 2016.
  3. Palliative Care Australia 2016, Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide: Position statement, viewed 1 Sep 2016, https://palliativecare.org.au/mediarelease/integrating-palliative-care-into-covid-19-planning/.
  4. Chambaere, K, Vander Stichele, R, Mortier, F, Cohen, J & Deliens, L 2015, 'Recent trends in euthanasia and other end-of-life practices in Belgium', N Engl J Med, 372(12), pp. 1179-1181.
  5. Dierickx, S, Deliens, L, Cohen, J & Chambaere, K 2015, 'Comparison of the expression and granting of requests for euthanasia in Belgium in 2007 vs 2013', JAMA Internal Medicine, 175(10), pp. 1703-1706.
  6. Swerissen, H & Duckett, S 2014, Dying well, Grattan Institute, Carlton, Victoria, pp. 37.

 

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