Fudge

What’s the big deal?

In her email, Ms van der Linden wrote provocatively against the Netherlands’ voluntary assisted dying (VAD) law, citing a recently-published medical journal study of Dutch VAD cases that involved people with intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorder (or both). The study is a legitimate examination of cases published by the Dutch Euthanasia Commissions, and contains numerous observations and some qualifications.

The first whopper

Mr van der Linden cherry-picks a single item from the study — that a majority of qualifying cases examined reported feeling socially isolated and lonely — and presses that into strong emotional words about “not caring” for people.

She failed to identify any other important aspect of either the study, or Dutch law, including:

• The article reported that two thirds (67%) of the cases had profound somatic (physical) conditions as well. Comorbidities are very common in Dutch VAD cases.
• The Dutch law requires:
  • The request to be well-considered
  • The patient’s suffering to be lasting and unbearable
  • The patient to be fully informed
  • The patient holding the conviction that there was no other reasonable solution, and
  • The attending doctor consulting a second doctor who also furnishes a written opinion about the qualification criteria.
     

So much for context and balance.

And she goes on.

The second whopper

Ms van der Linden then categorically and confidently states that:

“Like every other country that has legalised euthanasia, the debate in the Netherlands was initially about euthanasia for those with terminal illnesses. That has now shifted to approving requests for euthanasia for people with autism. This is the inevitable trajectory once a jurisdiction approves euthanasia laws.”

So much hyperbole. Let’s examine the facts:

1. Netherlands: The Dutch VAD law was legislated in 2001 and came into effect early 2002. It allowed non-terminal cases (including psychological) to qualify right from the outset.
2. Netherlands: Prior to the legislation, there was a period, from the 1980s, where VAD was approved by regulation (not legislation). Was that for terminal-only cases? Nope. Right from the outset, Dutch law permitted non-terminal cases.
    

So, Ms van der Linden’s claims about the Netherlands are foundationally false.

Now, on to the “inevitable trajectory” claim.

3. Belgium: Changed from terminal-only to non-terminal? Nope. (Non-terminal from the outset.)
4. Luxembourg: Changed from terminal-only to non-terminal? Nope. (Non-terminal from the outset.)
5. Switzerland: Changed? Nope. (There have been no statutory qualification criteria since 1942.)
6. USA states: Any of the lawful USA states, including Oregon where VAD law has been in effect since 1997, changed from terminal-only to non-terminal? Nope.
7. Australia: Any state changed from terminal-only to non-terminal? Nope.
    

Ms van der Linden’s claim is contradicted by so much evidence.

8. Canada: There is one notable jurisdiction where qualification criteria have changed, and that’s Canada. Changes have been many years in the making, involving nation-wide conversation and debate, steered by its legislature and most senior court. Many points have been thrashed out as representatives consider the issues and settle on what a majority of the nation's own citizenry (not Ms van der Linden) believes is appropriate.
    

Importantly, it’s worth noting that even with additions to qualification criteria set in law in Canada, they are still considerably more restrictive than in Switzerland — because Swiss legislation doesn’t stipulate any qualifying criteria. Yet Switzerland’s assisted dying rate is lower than Canada’s. It’s a cultural difference.

Changes to qualification criteria are very much the exception, not “inevitable” as Ms van der Linden wrongly states.

Two claims — both whoppers

It’s hard to imagine that Ms van der Linden, being so immersed in the VAD subject as she is, could be so unaware of the most fundamental facts. But maybe she is, despite the facts being easy to source. Such ignorance renders her an “unreliable witness”.

To my mind, repeatedly failing to establish the actual facts while confidently stating “counter-facts” that are not true — especially in order to influence others in support of one's personal ideological position — would be consistent with an impoverished sense of ethics.

Conclusion

I admire and respect Ms van der Linden’s passion for doggedly pursuing what she believes is right, and I’m thankful we live in a robust democracy that allows people to express and debate views consistent with their internal values.

What, I argue, isn’t worthy of admiration or respect is to repeatedly misinform one’s audience by failing to undertake the most basic checking to determine if what one is saying is fundamentally true, let alone balanced or contextually relevant.

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Flapdoodle | Fudge | Fiction | Voluntary euthanasia (VE) | Netherlands | Branka van der Linden | Article review | Claim response | Legislation | Legislative reform | Lobbying: Opponents

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I’ve discussed this subject in my research series Religiosity in Australia, penned as a Fellow of the Australian Rationalist Society. And this week, we were furnished with another example underpinning exodus 101, this time from the Anglican church.

Most Anglicans oppose VAD, don’t they?

In a piece for The Melbourne Anglican by writer Jenan Taylor, “Pro assisted dying Anglicans not in the majority”, religious dogmatism seems to be alive and well, despite plummeting numbers of Anglicans. Here are the first two sentences:

“Most Anglicans are against voluntary assisted dying despite a survey suggesting high levels of support among them, according to one Church leader.

Trinity College research professor the Reverend Canon Professor Dorothy Lee said there was always a diversity of opinion among Anglicans, but that most did not accept VAD.”

I was left astonished at this spectacular illustration of the Dunning Kruger effect: that often it is those with the least knowledge or skills in a subject who seem to have the greatest confidence in their opinions.

What’s the evidence?

For many years, repeated professional and scholarly social surveys have shown that around four in five Australian Anglicans are in favour of legalised voluntary assisted dying (VAD). I had a quick look through my records and found amongst recent studies that 79% of Anglicans supported VAD in 2016, according to the Australian National University-led Australian Election Study that year.

And VoteCompass, coordinated by scholars at the University of Melbourne alongside academics in Canada, in 2019 found 81% of Australian Anglicans favoured lawful VAD. It had a massive sample size of some 54,000 Anglicans. (Not 54,000 Australians: that was around 540,000, and in 2019 very close to 1 in 10 Australians said they were Anglican.)

And what was The Melbourne Anglican article reacting to? A just-published professional poll by The Australia Institute showing that in 2022, 82% of Anglicans support VAD. A result bang on the money relative to other recent high-quality research.

Research doesn’t always equal research

You will notice in the second sentence of the article, above, that Professor Dorothy Lee is introduced as “research professor” and her conclusion is that “most” Anglicans oppose VAD. Given this close juxtaposition, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the claim was based on something concrete.

It isn’t.

How could that be, if Lee is a “research professor”? Well, Prof. Lee’s CV doesn’t note that she’s a professor of sociology, or of quantitative social research. She’s a “research professor” of biblical narratives. The Gospels, to be particular.

I’m sure that Prof. Lee is indeed well versed in Biblical narratives, but this is no qualification for advancing a gratuitous opinion contrary to repeated high-quality research conducted by professionals and scholars with relevant expertise.

Ideological blinkers

Indeed, the article didn’t report any actual evidence to support Prof. Lee’s opinion. It’s just plonked on the page as though it’s authoritative. The only supporting material is ideological, for example that Anglicans are meant to pursue and support life at all times; that suffering can be alleviated, hypothetical slippery slopes, etc. The usual religious arguments.

Indeed, as I reveal in Part 2 of my Religiosity in Australia research series (that’s real sociological research based on robust, multiple high-quality survey data sources), the opinions of religious Australians about a range of social matters, including VAD and abortion, is quite at odds with – vastly more socially progressive than – their religious “masters”.

This is a key reason for Australians abandoning religion in droves: the laity find themselves liking dogmatic conservative stances from the pulpit less and less.

The exodus

Figure 1 shows the proportion of Australians who are Anglican, and their religious service attendance, by year. Notionals never attend services; Occasionals typically once or twice a year; Regulars monthly, and Devouts weekly or more often.

Figure 1: Proportion of Anglican Australians and their religiosity by year
Source: Australian Election Studies; Australian Bureau of Statistics. Note: The AES typically slightly over-samples Anglicans relative to Census data. Years in square brackets are the Census year, plotted against the closest AES year. Other Census points are plotted against the correct year.

Obvious is that the underlying base of Devouts has remained fairly stable over the years. But both Notionals and Occasionals have voted with their feet, and are no longer even willing to say that they’re “cultural” Anglicans. They’ve abandoned the church.

“Naughty” versus “real” Anglicans

Curiously, article author Ms Taylor asked my colleague and national coordinator of Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Assisted Dying, Mr Ian Wood, whether it was possible that the overall opinion of Anglicans was swayed by those who are not church-goers. Naturally, Mr Wood agreed it was a possibility.

But the very asking of the question raises a thorny issue for Ms Taylor and the Anglican church. It implies that Anglicans who don’t attend church are “lesser” Anglicans, or somehow misguided or “naughty” Anglicans. Not “real” Anglicans.

But if you say you represent Anglicans, who are you actually representing? More on that later.

Yes, opinions do vary

Prof. Dorothy Lee says there’s “a diversity of opinion among Anglicans”, while claiming most oppose VAD. So, let’s compare “naughty” with “real” Anglicans, using high-quality Australian Election Study 2019 data.

Figure 2 shows that hardly any Anglican Notionals oppose VAD (3%). Small minorities of Occasionals (13%) and Regulars (12%) also oppose VAD.

Figure 2: Attitudes of Australian Anglicans toward VAD, by religiosity
Source: Australian Election Study 2019

But even amongst Devouts (attend weekly or more often), a minority (41%) oppose VAD, and close to half (49%) think VAD should be lawful. Does this make half of Devout Anglicans “naughty” too?

To be sure, it’s important to point out that by the time the AES 2019 data set is drilled down to just Anglicans and their religiosity sub-groups, there is a somewhat higher degree of uncertainty in the exact percentages. Nevertheless, major differences are real and important.

And all of it is at odds with Prof. Lee’s contention that most Australian Anglicans (“real” or otherwise), oppose VAD.

Are the “masters” listening?

Despite this, religious “masters” within the Anglican church still strongly oppose lawful VAD with an active and hostile policy stance, recently re-confirmed.

It turns out that Prof. Lee is in fact one of those masters. She’s a member of the church’s Doctrine Commission.

And therein lies the rub. While some “masters” confidently opine that a policy consistent with their own personal view should prevail over the real views of most members, the members vote with their feet. They leave.

How is it that “masters” can be so profoundly disconnected from their flocks? It seems to suggest one or both of two things: firstly, that such folks only “hear” the views of those who agree, or secondly, that they fail to engender a communion in which people feel safe to express differences of opinion, including against “official” policy.

Good for the goose, good for the gander

If the Anglican church wants to “dismiss” the opinion of Notional Anglicans as not being “properly” Anglican, then it is equally valid for the government to reduce overall funding for Anglican schools, etc, by 42% from current levels. That’s the proportion of Anglicans who are Notionals in 2019 (Australian Election Study).

To bias the ‘measure’ of one’s base up or down purely on a desired ideological outcome is incoherent and invites derision. And unintended consequences.

Conclusion

By maintaining an actively hostile policy stance toward VAD, Australia’s Anglican church masters seem to suggest that their own opinions are more important than openly encouraging and seeking the real and diverse views of its congregation, and representing them.

Masters may argue that doctrinal purity is paramount. Society will counter-argue that the masters are representing fewer and fewer, recently becoming hardly any, real Australians.

Without doctrinal reform that in practice respects — not just cynically notes — a diversity of views, watch the exodus continue.

 

Keywords: 

Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Australia | Anglican/Church of England/Episcopal

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Sydney Anglican archbishop Kanishka Raffel (pictured on the diocese website above), has launched a program calling on NSW parliamentarians to reject a bill that, with a large number of safeguards, seeks to make VAD lawful in the state. NSW is the last state in the nation that still outlaws the practice.

The problem is, the archbishop is clearly backing his own personal beliefs and interests when he calls upon Anglicans to sign and share his petition calling for the unanimous rejection of the bill. That's because most Australian Anglicans, including those in NSW, support the law reform.

In 2019, academic pollsters VoxPop obtained the attitudes of more than 155,000 NSW voters regarding VAD. The views of NSW Anglicans are shown, by electorate, in Figure 1. Electorates with an asterisk are (with some very minor boundary differences) those within the archbishop's own diocese.

Figure 1: Attitudes of NSW Anglicans towards VAD law reform.
Source: VoxPop 2019. * Electorates in the archbishop's own diocese.

Immediately obvious is that most NSW Anglicans, including those in the archbishop's own diocese, are in favour of VAD law reform. That is, NSW MPs would be most wise to thoughtfully consider the bill and pass it. To oppose the bill would be to invite the wrath of most voters across all electorates in the state.

The archbishop might attempt to argue that his flock would change their minds if only they "understood". But that would be a hubris-based claim that those of differing views are somehow uninformed or mentally defective because they disagree.

Indeed, as I have written in a major research series about religiosity in Australia, this profound disconnect between senior clergy and their flocks is a key reason that Australians have been deserting religion in droves. That applies especially to the Anglican church, whose membership plummeted by 28% in just the fifteen years between the 2001 and 2016 censuses. And subsequent polling suggests it has fallen further since then.

To argue the "evils" of VAD, archbishop Raffel also teamed up with well-known Catholic anti-VAD campaigners Margaret Somerville and Father Frank Brennan. More of the usual connections...

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Australia | New South Wales | Frank Brennan | Margaret Somerville | Religion | Christian | Anglican/Church of England/Episcopal | Legislative reform | Lobbying: Opponents | Rhetoric: Slippery slope | Rhetoric: Suicide | Rhetoric: The 'vulnerable'

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Dr Marion Harris is an experienced Melbourne-based oncologist. Having practiced for some twenty years, she’s co-authored research papers published in the peer-reviewed medical literature regarding the assessment of treatments for particular kinds of cancer.

You’d think that such experience and attention to evidence and proper deduction would give rise to a moderate and thoughtful approach towards legal VAD (even if opposed) and on other more general matters. But she offers quite strident nonsensical arguments.

Inane logical flaw

The lead reason that Dr Harris advances against VAD is that people will feel coerced to take the option. She cites three cases of people who decided to pursue intensive medical treatment for cancer instead of pursuing VAD, and who she states would all have been eligible for VAD. This means she says that they would have been expected to die within six months. She then notes they’re all alive and doing well — relatively speaking, with significant medical conditions — more than a year later, due to pursuing intensive medical interventions.

I emailed Dr Harris and she confirmed that these were indeed Victorian medical cases personally known to her.

With the chosen cases outlined, she claims that “the option of VAD ignores these possibilities [of further treatment]”. That is, in the state of Victoria where she works and where VAD is legal as she acknowledged in her article, she opines that VAD would stymie such medical interventions.

So, Dr Harris argues, using three cases of patients pursuing further treatment in a state with lawful VAD, that patients will not pursue further treatment if VAD were to be made lawful. (Her op-ed is clearly aimed at NSW MPs who are currently considering VAD legislation.)

It’s as whacky as the theory that the reason you never see elephants hiding in treetops is because they’re good at it.

And it flies in the face of clear documentary evidence of careful practice published by Victoria’s own Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board, which Dr Harris doesn’t mention. We can only wonder why not.

Dr Harris inanely argues that people won't pursue medical treatment if VAD is legal, by describing three cases in which they did while VAD was legal.

Hubris?

A possible explanation for Dr Harris’ claim that people will be vulnerable to VAD when it is legal is that while she refuses to participate, doctors who do participate would not offer any and all available medical interventions that might help. But this this would be a shabby accusation against other doctors. Indeed, VAD law mandates that the patient be fully informed about treatment options as one of the qualification criteria should they apply.

Such an opinion about medical colleagues might also suggest a certain level of hubris and harsh attitudes about others. So perhaps this is not what she means, though other explanations for her conclusion are more elusive. We can only wonder, because Dr Harris has publicly stated in writing:

• “People are free to suicide but no-one has the right to expecct [sic] their govt to kill them on request.”
• “Boo hoo Ita … cry us a river … get over yourself” in response to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose saying she felt disrespected by Communications Minister Paul Fletcher.
• “Ha ha – nailed it” in response to a post “@JoeBiden ankle injury update ….. cause was falling over a box of @realDonaldTrump ballots in his basement.”
• “Very true” in response to a post stating that if Victoria’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Brett Sutton were put “in charge of climate emergencies he’d issue matches to every pyromaniac in Victoria, punch holes in the fire hoses at every CFA, then stand back and giggle while the state burned.”
   

She’s also retweeted comments that Donald Trump is the only person who can save the world from the Chinese Communist Party, and that the 2020 USA presidential election was “stolen” by election fraud.

Misrepresenting palliative care

In her article, Dr Harris argues again that palliative care is “the answer” despite both Palliative Care Australia and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine clearly stating that palliative care can’t help everyone, and that a small minority suffer badly leading up to death.

While a small but meaningful minority, such cases of suffering in extremis are not “very rare” as Dr Harris wrongly states.

Dr Harris wrongly states that palliative care eliminates the need for VAD legislation. The peak bodies for palliative care in Australia state that while palliative care helps many people, it can't help everyone. Nor should we expect palliative care to be the only medical discipline to be infallible. That would be cherry-picked, confected nonsense.

A bright spot

In her favour, Dr Harris does at least acknowledge in her article that people can have “genuinely chosen a VAD pathway for themselves”.

The Catholic Communicators’ Guild

I’ve written before about the Catholic Church and its network of anti-VAD communicators, many of whom don’t reveal their religious ideology. One can only wonder, given Archbishop Anthony Fisher’s active call to find willing “spokespeople” for the Church, if it has directly recruited Dr Harris to its anti-VAD campaign — or whether she’s merely a privately motivated individual.

Either way, there’s no shortage of evidence of Dr Harris’ very, very deep Catholic roots indeed. On Twitter, she follows, for example:

• Pope Francis.
• Vatican News.
• Catholic Bishop Tim Harris, the church’s spokesperson against VAD.
• Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher (Sydney).
• Catholic Bishop Richard (‘Down’) Unders (also Opus Dei: Sydney).
• Catholic Archbishop Peter Commensoli (Melbourne).
• Catholic Archbishop Mark Coleridge (Brisbane).
• Jeremy Stuparich, Public Policy Director, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
• Xavier Symonds, Research Fellow, Plunkett (Catholic) Centre for Ethics.
• National Catholic Register.
• Catholic News Agency.
• Catholic Arena (Catholic news and opinion).
• The Catholic Leader.
• Father Andrew McDonald (Canadian Catholic priest).
• The Society of St Sebastian (Catholic and Orthodox).
   

She warmly retweets posts from Catholic sources. Her posts are also consistent with the Catholic Church’s stances on sexuality and abortion, though her attitudes in denial of global warming are inconsistent with the Vatican’s, which supports efforts to combat it.

Indeed, in June 2021 she co-authored a similar op-ed also in The Australian, again replete with Catholic talking points. The other author was Emeritus Professor of Medicine Haydn Walters. What The Australian failed to declare is that Dr Walters is a board member of the innocuously named “Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies”. The stated aim of this organisation, nestled directly within the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart (it shares the church's head office address), is chillingly arrogant: “to promote awareness of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Cultural Patrimony as essential components of human civilization”.

Dr Harris even directly defends the Church. For example, in response to a post criticising the Church as incoherent for saying it would never abandon people who choose assisted dying, yet says it is likely to deny last rites and pastoral care for those who do, Dr Harris wrote:

• “Well the church is actually correct - the person is about to have an elective assisted suicide which is very different to a natural death so it does seem reasonable to question giving last rites - it’s the persons choice to select VAD and choices have consequences…”

Dr Harris provides ample evidence that she is a devout and traditional Catholic. That is her right. Curiously, though, she never mentions personal religious foundations for her views on VAD which align so strongly with Catholic Church talking points.

Conclusion

Dr Marion Harris’ anti-VAD tirades follow the same talking points as the Catholic Church and its network of communicators. In the current op-ed alone, she’s crafted an inane failure of logic, and employed misinformation about palliative care, to curry fear of responsible VAD law reform.

The invective apparent in some of her musings does her reputation no favours. While her personal view to never participate in VAD is deserving of respect, I argue that denying others their own choice of conscience, especially on the basis of misinformation and dumb logical falsehood, is not.

 

-----

For the record

For those wanting to run the "religious persecution" flag up the pole, this article is not for you. I wholeheartedly endorse Dr Harris's right to both her religion and her personal rejection of VAD. This article does not claim that Dr Harris's arguments are wrong because they are Catholic. It is to say, with appropriate reasoning (which Dr Harris failed to employ) and evidence that the claims she makes about VAD in her op-ed are illogical and poorly informed. They are an offence to acknowledging and protecting the different and deeply held ethical views of others.

The link I make to Catholicism is to point out how much of the nonsense promoted against VAD law reform is a malodorous vapour emanating from a seeming (and not infrequently actual) coordinated effort of a Catholic Church intent on imposing its views on all Australians, Catholic or not. Most Australians are not Catholic. And most lay Australian Catholics support VAD.

As I explain in a separate research series about Religiosity in Australia, the Church's intransigent attempts to trample the consciences of its own flock (let alone all Australians) is one of the reasons citizens have been abandoning the pews in droves in recent times.

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Flapdoodle | Fudge | Faith | Assisted dying (AD) | Voluntary euthanasia (VE) | Australia | Victoria | Catholic | Rhetoric: The 'vulnerable'

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It would be unreasonable to expect that the opinion editor of the Canberra Times, Andrew Thorpe, would be intimately versed in the empirical evidence about voluntary assisted dying (VAD). So, it was reasonable that he publish an opinion piece on the topic offered by Archbishop Prowse. What is not reasonable, however, is that the counter-opinion I promptly submitted, pointing out several points of significant misinformation, was not published. A month later, still nothing.

A critical feature of high-quality, mainstream media journalism (which includes editorialism) is to ensure that the public can be exposed to a range of views on important topics, and that those views are generally devoid of significant misinformation. I argue that the Canberra Times has profoundly failed in this instance, and could profitably reflect on improving its conduct.

Here's the op-ed I sent, which they failed to publish.

 

Archbishop Prowse sadly misinformed on assisted dying

Catholic Archbishop Christopher Prowse’s recent editorial against voluntary assisted dying (VAD) (Canberra Times, 11 Aug) contains numerous items of misinformation about the practice. While a range of views is welcome, misinformation is not an acceptable standard in public debate about such an important topic.

Unsurprisingly, Archbishop Prowse argues that more palliative care is “the answer” to end-of-life suffering. This ignores formal statements by both Palliative Care Australia and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine acknowledging that even the best palliative care can’t address all extreme suffering. It’s not like he wouldn’t know: the Catholic church is the largest single institutional provider of palliative care services in the nation.

His editorial also paints VAD deaths as “fearful”, “depressed” and “lonely”. This not only contradicts evidence published in peer-reviewed scientific research and official reports from lawful jurisdictions, but is a slap in the face to those who have chosen a VAD death, and to their families.

For example, the second person to use WA’s VAD law was Mary-Ellen Passmore. Her family and friends gathered to say farewell and sang Hallelujah together during her final moments. Loved ones of those who have accessed VAD in Victoria have described the experience as “peaceful” and “beautiful”.

Ms Passmore was also an indigenous community leader. This is relevant because Prowse argues that indigenous Australians would be fearful of VAD law, avoiding needed medical services.

This old chestnut has been rattling around since the Northern Territory VAD days in the 1990s, but was dismissed as false after a formal investigation found no change in indigenous medical service attendance. Indeed, a parliamentary inquiry heard that it was church members [not referring to Prouse or his diocesan colleagues] who were causing any indigenous fears.

Prowse also enlists “elder abuse” into his supposed army of the “vulnerable”. But a key feature of elder abuse is that it’s commissioned in secret, while VAD has numerous points of assessment, referral, review and documentation by trained professionals.

Perhaps the most egregious misrepresentation is his claim that “reasons for euthanasia quickly expand once legalised”, levelling specific claims about the Netherlands.

In fact, the Netherlands made VAD lawful by regulation in the mid-1980s. Several test cases in following years clarified that certain conditions (like extreme and unrelievable mental suffering) qualified under the regulations. These were formalised (not changed) in legislation in 2001. And that legislation hasn’t changed since. Not. One. Word.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the archbishop represents the views of Catholic Australians. But this isn’t true either. ANU studies show that some three quarters of Catholic Australians support lawful VAD.

I analysed the major 2019 data set of VoxPop — the academics who run VoteCompass — about VAD attitudes in the archbishop’s own archdiocese. It comprises the ACT and the NSW electorates of Bega, Cootamundra, Goulburn, Monaro, and about a third of Wagga Wagga.

With a VoxPop respondent count across the archdiocese of more than 34,000 people, four out of five voters favour lawful VAD with just 9% opposed. Not only that, but more than three out of four Catholic voters (76%) in the archdiocese favour lawful VAD, with just 13% opposed.

Voter attitudes toward VAD in the Canberra-Goulburn Catholic Archdiocese
Source: VoteCompass/VoxPop 2019.
~ Archdiocese totals weighted by elector count per district, Wagga Wagga weighted as 1/3 of.

Thus, not only does Archbishop Prowse seem unfamiliar with VAD facts, he seems remarkably unacquainted with the real views of his own flock.

Prowse argues that we are all “made in the image of God so we have dignity”. As an agnostic I’m happy for him to believe such things, though I say that everyone has dignity and life is precious regardless.

But when the archbishop proclaims that allowing VAD is “abandonment” of the person and that his views must prevail over all Australians, I call out hubris. “Abandonment” is to deliberatively seek to quash the deeply-held values and beliefs of others.

Most Australians, including Catholic ones, agree.

 

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Flapdoodle | Filibuster | Flip-flop | Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Assisted dying (AD) | Euthanasia | Australian Capital Territory | New South Wales | Religion | Rhetoric: Palliative care can always help | Rhetoric: Slippery slope | Rhetoric: Suicide | Rhetoric: The 'vulnerable'

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The punch line? “Don’t mention it’s healthy and they’ll eat it by the boxful.”

The Kellogg's Sultana Bran TV commercial from 1990.

Despite having worked in advertising research for years, I’m sure I hadn’t thought of this ad for at least a couple of decades. So what brought this vignette suddenly to mind?

It was the release of a new book by academic publisher, Springer: Devos, T, (Ed.) 2021, Euthanasia: Searching for the Full Story - Experiences and Insights of Belgian Doctors and Nurses, Springer, Leuven.

How terrific to have a new academic tome on the Belgian voluntary assisted dying (VAD) experience, I thought, as I downloaded the eBook version.

But then…

Imagine my surprise and disappointment then, to discover this is no scholarly tome with ethics-committee-approved study methodologies, carefully cited and transparent sources whose authenticity and veracity could be checked by anyone with a smidgin of scholarly acumen.

No, the kindest description I can give this blancmange of offenses is… a series of “essays” all singing from the same hymn sheet. More on that shortly.

The book launches into — let’s not beat about the bush — bullshit from the get go. In the Foreword, Jacques Ricot invokes the Hippocratic Oath as a still-relevant “religious standard”. Oh dear. You mean that oath that prohibits surgery, prevents women from entering the profession, and swears allegiance to ancient Greek gods?

He then goes on to describe VAD as a “desperate act of two people [the doctor and patient] trapped by helplessness.” He invokes cracks opening up in sea walls and waves that can only widen them. There’s your horizontal oceanic equivalent of the inevitable “slippery slope”.

Helpfully, he forewarns that all the authors in the book “do not believe that euthanasia can be a medical or a caring act.” OK, so not a range of views, then.

He also refers to the authors as “resistance fighters”, giving a heads-up that these writers feel they’re losing the battle.

And yet more

Then, anti-VAD campaigner Margaret Somerville repeats her rubbish claims that legalised VAD leads to suicide contagion. I’ve repeatedly taken Somerville to task over her serial misinformation, as well as noting the latest evidence from Switzerland which VAD opponents never mention… for a reason.

Somerville repeats yet again her refrain that “the case against [versus for] euthanasia is much more difficult to promote … because it is more complex”. No, it isn’t. It’s just that the majority now no longer take conservative religious doctrine as … shall we say, “gospel”. That’s especially true when her strongest ambit is to appeal to “a human way of knowing” (without mentioning her hobby horse, “moral intuition”, by name), and expressly noting that the stories that follow are not based on the usual scientific standards of evidence.

And there you have it. A series of “essays” by persons ideologically opposed to VAD, adorned with numerous uncheckable anecdotes and tawdry claims, appeals to slippery slopes, misrepresentation of data such as the non-voluntary euthanasia rate in Belgium, “intuitive” claims that the bereaved suffer as badly from lawful VAD as do families of those who have suicided violently and alone (despite multiple peer-reviewed studies showing VAD bereaved cope well). The list goes on.

Who are these people?

This of course begs the question: who are these people putting themselves forward as experts in VAD? Remember, these are people claiming expertise in a subject they’ve never participated in, and swear they never will. No doubt they are indeed experts in their own individual disciplines. But not in VAD.

It’s like asking (only) a bunch of hardened atheists to write an authoritative book on Christian spirituality.

Well, many of the names are already well-known in VAD (and especially anti-VAD) circles. Others took a bit of research to track down. Much of the work for the following backgrounders was accomplished by my friend the talented Chrys Stevenson. We compared notes.

The point of the research was not to attempt an inappropriate ad hominem attack. Without attempting to bore, I’ve already given a host of reasons as to why the quality of the essays in this book are very low. No, the point is to find common influences and agendas as to why that might be.

So lean in, dear reader, here we go. And to aid comprehension, may I suggest that you watch for the words in bold?

The editor — Timothy Devos

Timothy Devos is a Professor of Medicine (haematology) at Catholic University Leuven. He is a past president of the Medicine and Dignity of Man Association, an apostolate of the Catholic Regnum Christi movement, which believes that “the positions adopted by the Catholic Church in matters of bioethics are good, prudent”.

Foreword 1 — Jacques Ricot

Jacques Ricot is an Associate Researcher at Nantes University in France. In a 2003 paper he argues that secular philosophy needs to draw on the religious understanding of forgiveness. In 2014 he attended a conference on “dying with dignity” at the Catholic Notre Dame, Paris, articulating views harmonious with Catholic doctrine. In 2018, the European Federation of Catholic Doctors Associations and the Catholic Centre of French Doctors thanked him for valuable contributions to their thinking about human medicine.

Foreword 2 — Margaret Somerville

Professor of Bioethics at the (Catholic) University of Notre Dame Australia. (This is curious given that her CV mentions no earned tertiary qualification in either ethics or philosophy.) Somerville is a loyal Catholic who has for years been given pre-eminent position regarding Catholic bioethics above even the church itself at the L.J. Goody Bioethics Centre, as I’ve pointed out before.

The L.J. Goody Bioethics Centre is run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth. The Catholic Archbishops of Perth and Sydney are the ultimate controllers of the University of Notre Dame Australia.

Foreword 2 — Wesley Ely

Dr Wesley Ely is a Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee. He is President of the Nashville Guild of the Catholic Medical Association. He has given numerous addresses from a Catholic perspective on topics such as “Preaching the gospel through service”, “Five principles of service in living the gospel”, “Deepening our prayer life”, “Viaticum: lessons learned from dying patients seeking our Lord”, “Top 10 tips at the heart of Christian discernment” and “A treatise on the true devotion to the blessed virgin by a lay doctor”.

Contributor — Eric Vermeer

Mr Vermeer is a nurse educator and the ordained Deacon of the Catholic diocese of Namur. His adopted son is also a Catholic priest. He is a past President of the European Institute of Bioethics, a group that claims to be independent and not of a religious nature, yet “attentive to religious traditions”. It lobbies for positions that are consistent with Vatican doctrine, such as against abortion and VAD. Quite a number of the Institute’s committees are known religious people, including some from the Catholic University of Leuven.

Mr Vermeer has recorded an anti-VAD video for ADF International, which runs the Arete Academy, a centre for religious academics based on “excellence and moral value”… at least according to their interpretation of the Bible.

Contributor — Catherine Dopchie

Dr Catherine Dopchie is an oncologist at the Centre Hospital of Wallonia. She told the Society for Religious Information Italy, published by the Catholic Press Agency, that “death is the enemy of mankind”, that “we have been created for life”, that “those who have met God in their lives, know that death is not the winner”, and that “every man is precious to God and that the entire life is sacred”.

Dr Dopchie has also recorded an anti-VAD video making unsubstantiated claims, for ADF International.

Contributor — Willem Lemmens

Having earned his doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven, Professor Willem Lemmens is now Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp. In 2018, Professor Lemmens argued against VAD at the (Catholic) Anscombe Bioethics Centre in the UK, and spoke with Catholic newspaper Crux, to spread the misinformation that Belgium’s law was originally only for terminal illness (it never was), and to complain that (Catholic) Belgian Brothers of Charity were now allowing VAD to occur in their healthcare facilities.

He also sits on the General Council of the University Centre Saint-Ignatius Antwerp, which was established by a Jesuit (Catholic) order, and whose purpose is to continue to promote Jesuit Christian ideology.

Contributor — An Haekens

Dr An Haekens was educated at the Catholic University Leuven. She is a psychiatrist and medical director at the (Catholic) Alexian Care Group in Tienen, Belgium. It was established by the (Catholic) Belgian Brothers of Charity and states that “we start from our own Christian identity” and “we want to keep alive and implement the spirituality of the Alexians”.

Dr Haekens writes periodically for Belgian Catholic magazine Tertio, including stating that she would never participate in VAD. In 2021 she was interviewed by Belgian Catholic radio station Radio Maria, having been awarded the annual prize for spiritual care by the Professional Association of Care Pastors, the association for Catholic chaplains.

She is married to Dr Didier Pollefeyt, Catholic Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Australian Catholic University.

Contributor — Rivka Karplus

Dr Rivka Karplus is a family physician and an internal medicine and infections specialist, based in Israel. In 2018 he attended a colloquium at the College des Bernardins in Paris — a Catholic theological and biblical studies centre — as a representative of the Jerusalem Kehilla, a congregation of Hebrew-speaking Catholics. He is warmly cited in a 2016 anti-VAD publication by the Catholic Caritas in Veritate Foundation, which attempts to provide representatives at the UN and other international organisations with Catholic, Christian “expertise and strategic thinking”.

Contributor — Marie Frings

Dr Marie Frings is a Brussells-based GP specialising in palliative care. She writes for Catholic group Consecrated Lives which promotes increasing evangelical commitments. In such an article in 2007, she cites the Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as an authority on end-of-life decisions, and notes that sometimes she felt uncomfortable that patients would have their arms tied to be force-fed against their wishes so they lived indefinitely. She firmed her views that tube feeding was not mandatory when it is an extraordinary measure, with the help of several Catholic theologians and the pro-life committee of the episcopal conference of American (Catholic) Bishops.

She argued “respecting the conscience of others” in this regard, yet expressly rejects such conscience when it comes to choosing a peaceful, hastened death by VAD.

Contributor — Benoit Beuselinck

Dr Benoit Beuselinck graduated from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and has for years worked in the university’s hospitals. In 2017 he spoke at an anti-VAD conference at the Catholic Anscombe Bioethics Centre in the UK.

In an article in the Catholic magazine Logia, he claims that “proper palliative care makes assisted dying unnecessary”, even though it is well-established that this isn’t true.

He alleges in the Catholic Herald that Belgian nurses and social workers are quitting their jobs because palliative care units are being turned into “houses of euthanasia”, and that doctors in palliative care units “have to euthanise patients”. He also claims that some patients are afraid to go to hospital in case they are either coerced into euthanasia or are deliberately killed without their consent. This is a perversion of the original Netherlands accusation by the Vatican, which itself was entirely false.

Dr Beuselinck has also made an anti-VAD video for ADF International, making unsubstantiated claims that “doctors hide behind their patients’ wishes”, “supply creates demand”, “the doctor has his back to the wall”, “we want euthanasia for everyone”, “doctors who prefer not to do it are not respected”. He cherry-picks Belgian non-voluntary euthanasia data to wrongly make the case that their VAD law has caused (or at least worsened) that practice; the opposite of the truth. He says that euthanasia is an act against nature, opens the floodgates, that we no longer favour the love we show in taking care of someone, and that the depressed may now think “if the doctor can kill, then what is my life worth?”

Contributor — Julie Blanchard

Dr Julie Blanchard is a French-trained GP who specialises in palliative care. She works at the Catholic University of Leuven’s second hospital, in Namur, and never participates in VAD. Contrary to Dr Beuselinck’s claims that palliative care workers opposed to VAD are disrespected and forced to participate, Dr Blanchard reports that other doctors respect her opposition, and that VAD teams take care to ensure those who are against VAD are not present at the time of a lethal injection.

It's astonishing how inconsistencies like this — those opposing VAD are respected but are not respected — reduce the book’s coherence.

Contributor — François Trufin

François Trufin is an emergency nurse at St Nikolaus Hospital in Eupen, Belgium. The hospital was founded and continues to be sponsored by the Catholic church, “continuing [the] obligation of the founders” for a “Christian worldview”.

Religious petticoats and the Catholic Communicator’s Guild

So there you have it: the Catholic connections of the people involved in the production of this risible nonsense, which brims with innuendo, arguments and misinformation consistent with those of the Catholic church and other Catholic apologists.

I’ve written before how Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher has expressly argued for organising a line-up of sympathetic (i.e. Catholic) doctors, lawyers and others to put such information about, and yet, how they hide their religious petticoats while doing so. I’ve further exposed a network of Catholics who promote the church’s line on VAD — a network I call the Catholic Communicator’s Guild.

This book furnishes an international example of the same principle: a group of Catholics promoting entrenched church lines on VAD, but hiding their religious petticoats all the while.

You may wonder how many times the word “Catholic” appears in said book. The answer is: exactly zero. And mentions of “religion” and “faith” appear as abstract and conceptual argument, e.g. if a person of faith…

Not the first time it’s been published

But a further issue arises in respect of this book: it’s not the first time it’s been published. It was published two years ago by Mols Editions (Wavre) under the title Euthanasia: Behind the Scenes — Reflections and Experiences of Caregivers. Tellingly, it was published in French and mentions the French parliament grappling with VAD law reform. (The current French VAD Bill, which appears to be supported by a majority of MPs, has been filibustered with well over 2,000 (two thousand) amendments submitted by just five MPs.)

Unlike the original which you have to buy, this Springer version is “Open Access”, meaning you can download the book from the publisher for free. So is this further edition vanity publishing?

The reason I ask is that Springer Publishing is owned by Springer Nature. That’s a company whose purpose is to make money for its owners via academic publishing. So publications have to be paid for either by sales, or by authors. Since there are no sales, the authors (or someone on their behalf) will have had to pay for the book.

According to their fee schedule, Springer charge US$15k (around AUD$20k) plus taxes for publishing a tome of this nature.

So: who paid for the book?

Conclusion

Far from a carefully researched collection of studies into VAD practice in Belgium, this polemical book relies heavily on the “moral intuitions” of innuendo, unverified anecdote and misinformation. It’s consistent with the propaganda put about by the Catholic church, yet not once throughout the entire book does anyone mention their deep Catholic connections. Indeed, you could be forgiven for thinking they’d taken some care to cover their religious petticoats.

A serious compendium of proper, scholarly studies of VAD practice, good and bad, is always welcome. This book is not it.

In my view, the tome does no favours for Springer, which has a solid reputation for academic and scholarly publication.

And, back to that 1990 TV commercial for boxes of breakfast cereal. It had popped into my head as an analogue: “Don’t mention it’s religious and they’ll publish it by the book-full.”

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Flapdoodle | Filibuster | Flip-flop | Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Assisted dying (AD) | Euthanasia | Belgium | Catholic Church | Catholic

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The reason the statistics are being discussed is because in 2017, Victoria's parliament legalised voluntary assisted dying (VAD) for the terminally ill. The law came into effect halfway through 2019, and 2020 was the first full year of its operation.

Australian Care Alliance gets the basics wrong

Here's the Australian Care Alliance's (ACA) splashy page trumpeting that Victoria's suicide rate has jumped 21.2% from 694 in 2017 to 842 in 2020.

Figure 1: ACA's splashy page trumpeting a 21.2% increase in Victorian suicides

That's... interesting. According to the Victorian coroner's official figures, there were indeed 694 suicides in Victoria in 2017. However, in 2020 the coroner's figure is actually 698, not 842 as claimed by the ACA. According to the ACA, Victoria's suicide count data looks like this (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The ACA polemically claims that Victoria's suicide count has increased 21.2%

So, how did the ACA reach a count of 842? Well, their argument is to shamefully and humiliatingly disrespect Victoria's terminally ill who died peacefully under its VAD law in 2020 — 144 of them according to the official 2020 reports of Victoria's Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board — and add them to the coronial count of 698 suicides.

The ACA points out that VAD supporters have said that legalising VAD should decrease Victoria's general suicides by about 50 cases a year, but say the count's gone up substantially instead. See how they craftily deploy logical fallacy to fabricate a crisis?

Arguing that VAD law must reduce the suicide count by 50 cases a year (but seemingly didn't) and at the same time adding VAD cases to the suicide count to complain that it's gone up, requires at least three assumptions:

1. that all terminally ill violent suiciders now automatically qualify for and easily gain access to VAD; and
2. that nobody else with a terminal illness who would not have chosen violent suicide, should or would use the law; and
3. that no other factors make a significant difference to trends in general suicides.

 
All these assumptions are patently false.

Obviously, some people will not legally qualify for VAD; for example, amongst its restrictions it requires death to be expected with 6 months; 12 months for a small set of specific illnesses.

Obviously, some who would not have suicided but instead would suffer intolerably and against their wishes until death, will now choose to pursue VAD.

And obviously, well-known factors such as rates of mental illness, substance abuse, intimate relationship troubles, bullying, financial or legal difficulties, and other factors are major influencers of general suicide rates. But to the ACA, the only factor that supposedly has any effect is the one they are ideologically opposed to: VAD.

It's worrisome that this nonsense is sold to the public by ACA's supposed experts: “health professionals and lawyers”.

Cherry-picked overseas data, too

The ACA's ideological bias is further revealed by their website page about the “social contagion of suicide”. In it, they cite as authoritative, the 2015 Jones and Paton (both firm Catholics) article purporting to show 6.3% suicide contagion from VAD to the general population. I've comprehensively exposed that article as an ideologically-driven mathematical farce fuelled by no fewer than ten major scientific offenses. It's interesting that the ACAs methodology is just like Jones' and Patons': reporting VAD supporter statements that legalisation should decrease the general suicide rate, and then adding VAD deaths to conclude the opposite.

They also commit one of Jones' and Patons' other offences: selectively quoting data from other studies that might be seen to support their theory, but excluding critical alternative information from the same study that runs counter to the theory.

The ACA cites a Swiss study to breathlessly report that 6.5% of those who witnessed an assisted death in that country experienced sub-threshold PTSD, and 13% full PTSD. The ACA expressly states:

“Like any other suicide, assisted suicide can profoundly affect surviving family members and friends.” — The Australian Care Alliance

There you have it: the ACA draws a direct equivalence between peaceful VAD deaths in the face of terminal illness and with loved ones present, and lonely, violent deaths by general suicide.

The ACA cites no other relevant material from the Swiss article. That's revealing, because the article clearly reported that the PTSD rates were higher than in the general population. There's what the ACA left out: the PTSD rates were higher than for almost everyone else who hadn't just suffered the loss of a loved one.

To draw valid and meaningful interpretations, it is necessary to compare the bereavement challenges of VAD family versus families of general deaths, deaths in the face of extreme suffering without hastened death, and cases of violent suicide. As I've published before from peer-reviewed studies, bereavement symptoms of VAD family are at least as good as, and can be better than those where the deceased has suffered in extremis at the end of life, and certainly relative to violent suicides.

The ACA also doesn't mention that the Swiss study found a "prevalence of complicated grief ... comparable to that reported for the general Swiss population". It's not like the information was hard to find. It's right there in the Abstract on the front page of the article.

That the ACA cherry-picked a couple of Swiss data points while omitting key “unhelpful” information, and argued, by linking the selected cherries with the above quote, that said Swiss data established something it clearly did not (that VAD deaths supposedly cause similar family trauma as violent suicides), suggests an astonishing degree of ignorance.

The ACA's cherry-picking of data, while omitting key unhelpful information, suggests an astonishing degree of ignorance.

Enough of that.

Branka van der Linden cherry-picks, too

I've crossed pens (or is that keyboards?) with Ms van der Linden several times before in regard to misinformation. She misinforms on this matter, too.

Curiously, like the ACA and also without explanation, she cherry-picks just the 2017 and 2020 suicide counts from the Victorian coroner's report (Figure 3). You'd think this was the only data in the report, but no, it isn't.

Figure 3: Branca van der Linden's version of Victorian suicide counts by year

She uses these two figures to argue that said drop of 50 cases per year hasn't happened. This employs the same fallacies as the ACA: suggesting that two single data points strongly support a hypothesis, and assuming that the thing one is ideologically opposed to, VAD, is the only thing to alter the rate of general suicides over time.

Like the ACA, she also suggests adding the VAD figures to the coroner's general suicide data to say that in that case, suicides have increased significantly.

Both the Australian Care Alliance and Branca van der Linden cherry-pick just two data points from more full and robust longitudinal data to try and argue their case against VAD.

So what does the coroner's full data set look like?

The actual numbers

The Victorian coroner's 2021 report into suicides contains data for all years 2016 to 2020 inclusive. And it looks like this (Figure 4).

Figure 4: The complete set of data from the Victorian coroner's report on suicide counts per year

Now we're beginning to see a possible reason as to why the ACA and Ms van der Linden chose just two data points. Remember that VAD was legalised by the Victorian parliament in 2017. The law was not in effect for 2017, 2018, or the first half of 2019.

Well, the data clearly suggests an increasing suicide count trend up to 2018. The upward trend stops in 2019, when VAD was in operation for the second half of the year. And in 2020, the first full operational year of VAD, the upward trend has been interrupted by a downward result. Neither the ACL nor Ms van der Linden mention this.

Neither the Australian Care Alliance nor Branca van der Linden mention the fuller, longitudinal data that doesn't support, and indeed appears hostile to, their hypothesis.

But even the raw suicide count statistics are a bit misleading.

Interpreting suicide data correctly

Using raw counts to compare suicide statistics (e.g. year to year or place to place) is lazy and wrong. All other things being equal, if you had twice the population, you'd expect twice the suicide count. To make valid comparisons, you have to compare rates, not raw counts. This is relevant because populations obviously change over time, and Victoria between 2016 and 2020 was no exception.

I've retrieved the official Victorian population figures by year and computed the standard official suicide rate statistic: suicides per 100,000 population. The Victorian suicide rates look like this (Figure 5):

Figure 5: Victorian suicides per 100k population by year

The data shows a rising suicide rate from 2016 to 2018, a levelling off in 2019 in which VAD was operational for half the year, and a fall back to the 2016 rate in 2020, the first full operational year of VAD.

Computing from the rate drop between 2018 (11.4 with no VAD law) and 2020 (10.8, first full year of VAD law), the equivalent count of suicide decrease in 2020 was 38 persons. And that's without assuming the general suicide rate would have continued its rising trend.

The equivalent suicide decrease from 2018 to 2020 was 38 persons.

Getting all the numbers right

The ACA correctly cites then Minister for Health, Ms Jill Hennessy, as stating in 2017 that "Evidence from the coroner indicated that one terminally ill Victorian was taking their life each week." That would be 52 cases a year, which the ACA rounds out to 50 a year. The headline figure from the coroner's report actually calculates to 48. No biggie, just round numbers.

But the figure is quite wrong. You have to read the coroner's special 2017 report to the Victorian parliament regarding suicides in cases of illness, to calculate the correct numbers.

The coroner's report didn't just include suicide data for terminally ill people. It also included cases of advanced incurable but not terminal illness, and cases of severe suffering resulting from injuries. So the terminal illness data (to which the VAD law is relevant) is a fraction of the total. We can calculate from the Tables in the report that 23% of the cases were in respect of injuries, so that leaves 77% for terminal and other advanced illnesses.

Of the illnesses listed, the relevant one as a proxy measure for terminal illness is “cancer”, and that comprises 50% of the illness cases. So, 50% of 77% of 48 cases a year = 19 cases a year in respect of terminal illness.

So that's an actual likely decrease of 19 suicide cases a year, compared with an equivalent drop in the actual data of 38 persons in the first full year.

The actual annual count of general suicides in respect of terminal illness, as reported to the Victorian parliament by the state coroner in 2017, was 19 persons a year, and not 50 as widely stated.

Don't get carried away

It's imporant to note that citing this interesting numeric analysis as “proof” of the law's effectiveness in respect of reducing Victoria's suicide rate, would, at present, be an overconfident claim. While far more firmly based in proper forms of evidence than the vapid nonsense promoted by the ACA and Ms van der Linden, this is a correlation. Correlation does not equal causation: the ACA and Ms van der Linden should remember that. For example, 2020 was a very unusual, Covid-19-dominated annus horribilis, which may have affected suicide rates in unexpected ways.

While the coroner's fuller data set so far is consistent with reasoned expectations of suicide substitution, it is premature to conclude the data proves the principle. More years' data, and more detailed, causative analysis involving the control of confounding factors, is necessary before reaching greater certainty in the association.

But as I've published in detailed and extensive analyses based on robust official data, so far all the longitudinal data on suicide rates in jurisdictions where VAD is lawful is consistent with suicide substitution, not suicide contagion. Some VAD opponents just cherry-pick their way through tidbits to try and argue the opposite.

To date, all the robust, longitudinal data on suicides in jurisdictions where VAD is lawful is consistent with suicide substitution, not suicide contagion.

Conclusion

The Australian Care Alliance and Ms van der Linden disgracefully cherry-pick and misrepresent Victoria's recent suicide data in a manner consistent with their own theories, while proper and appropriate analysis of the full data available shows results inconsistent with their hypothesis, and currently consistent with the opposite.

To paraphrase Ms van der Linden's own statement: “It is unfortunate that the deaths of terminally ill Victorians were politicised so shamelessly by [anti-]euthanasia activists for their own ends.”

These continued cherry-picked data gaffes are an embarrassment to their promoters.

 

Keywords: 

Bull | Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Assisted dying (AD) | Australia | Victoria | Branka van der Linden | Religion | Catholic | Statistics | Rhetoric | Rhetoric: Suicide | Rhetoric: Suicide 'contagion'

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"I often use the story of the death of a 26 year old ballerina in Holland [sic]. She had contracted a form of arthritis at this young age and her dancing career and dreams were dashed. An American oncologist who spoke later to the killing doctor reported the Dutch medico as saying something like 'One doesn't like doing it, but it was her choice.'" — Paul Russell, "HOPE" [my emphasis]

(Note: "Holland" comprises just the two north-west provinces of the Netherlands. "Holland" and "the Netherlands" are not correctly substitutable terms. The Dutch euthansia Act applies to the whole of the Netherlands, not to just two provinces.)

Checking with authoritative sources

In 2012, I travelled across the Netherlands with camera in tow, interviewing key stakeholders in the nation's assisted dying law about its operation. Nobody had heard of the supposed ballerina case, including long-serving politicians, the Royal Dutch Medical Association, nor even Professor Theo Boer or the Dutch Patient Rights Association who actively oppose the law.

USA doctor Dr Robin Bernhoft muses about a Dutch ballerina nobody in the Netherlands has heard of

It turns out that the meme was a bit of unverified nonsense put about by USA Catholic radio- and televangelist Dr Robin Bernhoft in an early 1990s polemic anti-VAD video, "False Light", narrated by staunch Catholic actor Joseph Campanella. Dr Bernhoft has castigated believers in evolution as "sexually immoral, abortion supporters, racists and violators of each of the Commandments".

In the video, Dr Bernhoft often gazes nonchalantly into the distance, or at his hands, as he narrates his stories. It's all very third-hand and mysterious, conspicuously devoid of even the faintest whiff of evidence. But Dr Bernhoft doesn't claim to have actually spoken to the doctor, as Mr Russell states. Perhaps the confidently stated direct-contact idea is a signal of confirmation bias.

Those little Dutch cards

Confidence was also common amongst VAD opponents, like Oregon Nurse Donna Howell also featured in "False Light", spreading the nonsense that the Dutch wander around carrying little cards pleading for protection from being killed.

"It's gotten so bad in Holland [sic] that people have in their wallets little cards that say 'Do not euthanise me without my permission'." — Nurse Donna Howell

USA Nurse Donna Howell confidently says the Dutch carry little cards saying 'do not euthanise me'

Just like the supposed ballerina, nobody I interviewed across the Netherlands, including the anti-VAD Patient Rights Association which would be the natural source of "little cards" for patients, had ever heard of the little cards, either.
 

The architect of the Dutch euthanasia law, Dr Els Borst, arguably the most informed stakeholder of the era, responded to the "little cards" claim in plainer language:

"That is an absolute lie." — Els Borst

A diet of evidence-less anecdotes

Anecdotes — devoid of verifiable evidence — about supposed dangers are a favourite diet of VAD opponents, like the nonsense put about by the Vatican, and Catholic Professor Margaret Somerville, that Dutch elderly are streaming into Germany for hospital treatment for fear of being euthanised in the Netherlands; that Els Borst supposedly regretted her law reform; or that there's some kind of slippery slope from VAD to non-voluntary euthanasia — which Rick Santorum handily mutated into involuntary euthanasia.

The anecdote is a favourite snack of opponents for dishing out when they've run out of other confectionery.

Back to now

One's being served up again in Tasmania right now, and it smacks of desperation. In its most recent media release, the Australian Christian Lobby, from the home of the Bible Society in St John Street, Launceston, launched its latest shrill warning with the claim that:

"In a conversation with a member of the British Parliament, one Dutch doctor explained what it was like when euthanasia laws first came to the Netherlands. He said, 'We agonised over our first case of euthanasia all day, but the second case was much easier and the third was a piece of cake.'"

So let's reflect: on some unspecified date ("when euthanasia laws first came to the Netherlands": but that would be the mid 1980s) some unnamed British MP once said that an unnamed Dutch doctor once told him or her… that their third euthanasia case "was a piece of cake".

Who what now?

One only has to glance at readily-available records to see what a load of, um, how shall we put this?... bollocks, the claim is. The Australian Christian Lobby is not referring to a recent, documented, verfied fragment of evidence. Rather, the ACL has jauntily appropriated a statement from May 1998, by Lord McColl of Dulwich in the British parliament. Straight from the Hansard's mouth:

"The Dutch doctors told us: 'We agonised over our first case of euthanasia all day, but the second case was much easier and the third was a piece of cake.'" — Lord McColl

"Dutch doctors": plural. However, the statement is not of the kind that would be said by a broad collective of doctors as Lord McColl story relates.

Indeed, in 2006 his Hansard story mutated to "when a Dutch doctor was asked...". Suddenly from multiple doctors to just one; from direct, personal receipt of the claim, to the claim being made to an unspecified audience, stated in the tell-tale passive voice. If it were really said to you and you wanted to punch home a key point in a spirited on-the-record debate, you wouldn't forget, and you'd make a point that it was said to you, wouldn't you?

Piling up the anecdotes

What else has Lord McColl had to say about the Holland [sic] experience on the Hansard record in 2006? Ah, the "little cards" anecdote, still doing the rounds more than a decade after its invention:

"Many elderly people in Holland [sic] are so fearful of euthanasia that they carry cards around with them saying that they do not want it." — Lord McColl

An anecdotal claim without at least one independent, verifiable source isn't really evidence at all. It's just a myth. A handy but hollow sound bite. It reveals little about the subject... but rather a more about the claimant.

The "piece of cake" anecdote, like those before and since, are just myths conjured up to curry fear, uncertainty and doubt. Piling them up doesn't make them any more true.

Conclusion

As I put one anecdotal claim after another to each of my interviewees across the Netherlands, including VAD opponents, they'd roll their eyes and give courteous replies to the effect that, as one interviewee generously put it, "nobody in the Netherlands takes such commentary seriously."

But I think I prefer Senator Erik Jurgens' parsimony: Bullshit.

And if history is any guide it won't be long before the next re-moistened cowpat is heaved at the political reform fan in the hope that some of it sticks.

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Australia | Netherlands | Paul Russell | Religion

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I've exposed Prof. Boer's cherry-picked nonsense before. Astonishingly, he even ignores data from the Dutch Euthanasia Commission, despite the fact he used to serve on one of its five Regional Review Committees.

What he doesn't mention is that amongst the five Regions, the Region with by far the highest rate of assisted deaths had the second-lowest rate of general suicide, and the Region with the lowest assisted death rate had by far the highest general suicide rate (Figure 1) in 2014,¹ the year Boer left his Committee and began bad-mouthing the Dutch law. Quite the opposite of "suicide contagion".

Figure 1: Dutch assisted death and general suicide rates by region, 2014

From multiple safeguards to just one

The Dutch euthanasia Act has a number of safeguards that stipulate who may qualify to access assisted dying in the Netherlands, and how qualification is assessed, implemented and reported to the authorities.

But there's another country that permits assisted dying with just one provision: Switzerland.

In effect since 1942, an exception in the Criminal Code permits assisted suicide, provided assistance is rendered for non-selfish motives. That's it. There's no legislated (or even government-regulated) requirements for age, illness or condition, decisional capacity, cooling off periods, or anything else.

In the 1980s, two assisted dying associations were formed to make assisted dying generally possible: Exit Deutsche Schweiz for German-speaking Swiss residents, and Exit A.D.M.D. for French-speaking residents.

Since then, several other smaller associations have been formed, including in 1998 Dignitas, which provides assistance to foreigners. (The main societies assist only Swiss residents.) The current membership of the societies, combined, is well in excess of 150,000 people, in a population of just 8.5 million. Assisted dying is often discussed openly in the media.

If "contagion" anywhere, in Switzerland, right?

Given that Switzerland has an abundance of the ingredients that religious opponents of assisted dying claim lead to "suicide contagion", you'd think they'd be shouting about Swiss "suicide contagion" from the rooftops.

But they don't mention Switzerland.

There's a powerful reason why: the data is not only unhelpful to their "contagion" theory, but actively hostile to it.

Latest official government data

I've written about Switzerland before, but, given the ongoing "suicide contagion" misinformation, I thought an update warranted. On request, my contact in the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) promptly re-supplied all publicly-available statistics of assisted deaths and general suicides, with the data now running up to 2017.

It makes for interesting reading. Figure 2 shows Switzerland's (CH) long-term general (non-assisted) suicide rate, along with the domestic (Swiss resident) and Dignitas (foreigner) assisted death rates. All the official (Australian Bureau of Statistics) longitudinal data I could find for Australia's (AU) general suicide rate is also included.

Figure 2: Swiss death rates 1969–2017; Australian suicide rates 1990–2017

Immediately obvious is that the Swiss general suicide rate has dropped massively and consistently since the two main assistance societies were formed in the early 1980s. And it's continued to drop even as the rate of assistance, and public discussion, has increased over the most recent three decades.

I also asked the FSO how many cases on record were of minors (persons under the age of majority or 18 years). The answer? None. I double-checked. Zero. Zip. No minors receiving assisted dying in Switzerland. Indeed, cases under the age of 35 years old are uncommon.

Consistent with best practice

Indeed, the data is consistent with suicide prevention. The societies help people get the medical care they need and consider assisted death only when other avenues have failed to provide acceptable relief. Every assisted death is reported as such by the association to the authorities — otherwise the unexpected death would result in a coronial inquiry.

Each association has clearly-defined processes and oversight by ethics specialists. Clients requesting access are assessed carefully by doctors. (In fact, the lethal medication can only be lawfully obtained by medical prescription.) The associations take their responsibilities very seriously.

The data is also consistent with substitution: that what would have been some violent and lonely suicides as a result of unrelievable suffering from intractable conditions, are now peaceful assisted deaths.

And for the record, despite the Swiss law being in effect since 1942 versus Dutch regulation from only 1984; and Swiss law having only one provision versus Dutch regulation/legislation with many; in 2017 the Swiss assisted dying rate, including Dignitas cases, as a percent of all deaths, was less than half that of the Netherlands' rate.

Reasons for requesting an assisted death

Exit Deutsche Schweiz, by far the largest of the Swiss associations, has published statistics of its cases (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Reasons for pursuing assisted dying, Exit Deutsch Schweiz 2015

In 2015, like other jurisdictions, cancer was by far the most common reason (40.8%) for requesting an assisted death. Polymorbidities (22.4%) was next, followed by refractory pain at 8.6%, lung diseases at 5.0% and Parkinsons at 4.3%.

Despite no government-regulated access requirements, assistance for mental illness was very low at 1.7% (Dutch 1.2% in 2015) and cases of dementia at 1.4% (Dutch 2.0%; Belgian combined mental/dementia 3.1% in 2015).

And compared to Australia?

In the 1990s, the Swiss general suicide rate, although falling, was significantly higher than Australia's (Figure 2) until 2010, when the rates were the same. Since 2010, the Swiss suicide rate (with no legislated procedures for its permitted assisted dying) has continued to drop, while Australia's (at that time with no assisted dying law at all), began to rise.

This difference highlights the clear anchoring bias exhibited by religious opponents who cherry-pick their data to try and claim the rise in the Dutch general suicide rate must be the result of "suicide contagion" from assisted dying, when Australia's rate also increased over the same time period, but in the complete absence of an assisted dying law. (Victoria's assisted dying legislation didn't come into effect until mid-2019.)

Further, the Swiss rate has continued to drop even with a significant increase in assisted dying.

Conclusion

Of course, general suicide is a serious issue. It has numerous well-known risk factors (e.g. mental health, substance abuse, unemployment, relationship breakdown, opportunity) and protective factors (e.g. hotlines, funding mental health programs, unemployment benefits, removing opportunity), none of which assisted dying opponents mention while cherry-picking their statistics.

Meanwhile, as legislators contemplate the specific safeguards contained in Bills before their legislatures, it's important to strike an appropriate balance between sufficient safeguards, and inappropriately requiring those considering an assisted death to climb Mount Everest with one hand tied behind their backs.

Switzerland shows that even in a jurisdiction without legislated practices, access to assisted dying is modest, with assistance groups establishing their own stringent ethical and procedural standards.

And it amply demonstrates even under those conditions, an absence of supposed "suicide contagion".

-----

¹ Official Euthanasia Commission data and official Dutch government suicide statistics by region.

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Assisted dying (AD) | Australia | Victoria | Belgium | Netherlands | Switzerland | Theo Boer | Margaret Somerville

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While it's far from my preferred practice to take on someone recently bereaved, Mrs Dugdale has put herself and her family firmly in the public square by publishing an editorial about her grandmother's death (actually her husband’s gran) the very day after she died.

All is not as it seems and a response is required.

Catholic talking points

Let's not beat about the bush: Mrs Dugdale's piece is a grotesque misrepresentation of Victoria's VAD law and relies on gallingly distorted framing. Despite not mentioning faith, religion or Catholicism, her opinion piece ticks most Catholic talking-point boxes I've pointed out previously, such as Mrs Dugdale’s:

• Headlining that her gran was not in particular pain. We already know from extensive overseas experience that pain is a less common reason behind why people consider VAD.
• Being sure to emphasise the death was a suicide, and that "suicide is not courageous, it's an horrendous act of desperation and defeat".
• Linking it to loneliness caused by Covid-19 lockdown.
• Shabbily inferring that doctors did not discuss and offer all and anything palliative care could bring to bear, when there's a consultation process mandated by law.
• Suggesting that palliative care could alleviate all intolerable suffering, but which both palliative care peak bodies in Australia concede is not possible.
• Scandalously implying that medical care workers were forced to participate in her assisted death against their will, when the law protects anyone who wishes to decline.
• Suggesting her gran's choice was an issue of mental health, implying that she wasn't fit to decide, when in fact doctors must confirm decisional capacity.
• Describing the process as "obfuscation and secrecy" when a strong chain of documentary evidence is mandated, while no process is mandated for the Catholic church's own accepted patient path to foreseeable death: refusal of life-saving medical treatment.

 

Mrs Dugdale employs no fewer than eight Catholic church talking points in her attack on Victoria's VAD law.

Spurned "help"

Also of note is Mrs Dugdale's description that she and her husband were "silenced" and "quickly shut down" so there was "little my husband and I could do to help." Did the family actually want help of the kind Mrs Dugdale and her husband were determined to dispense?

One wonders what Mrs Dugdale's gran would think if she could see how a granddaughter-in-law had sought to weaponise her choice for VAD, against the law itself.

Who is Madelaine Dugdale?

So who is Mrs Madelaine Dugdale? Her article bio reports only that she's a former Melbourne high school teacher and now a full-time mum of four with one on the way. Move along, nothing to see here…

Well, it’s worth looking a bit more carefully, elsewhere. Mrs Dugdale graduated from (Catholic) Campion College. And that high school where she worked? St Kevin’s (Catholic) College in Toorak, Melbourne, where she taught… religion.

She's a leading member of Catholic Voices Australia, whose purpose is "putting the Church's case in the public square."

So in summary, this anti-VAD diatribe bristling with Catholic church misinformation was penned by a leading member of Catholic Voices Australia whose remit is "putting the Church's case in the public square", but which failed to identify that religious connection and attempted to give the appearance of secular impartiality.

If there's any remaining doubt about Mrs Dugdale's Catholic devotion, here she is discussing the Pope's amoris laetetia (the joy of love) book with Fr Tony Kerin, an Episcopal Vicar for Life, Marriage and Family in Melbourne.

Hidden religious petticoats indeed.

And who is the publisher?

Mrs Dugdale's anti-VAD tirade is published online by the masthead MercatorNet. It declares itself to be "dignitarian", and reveals that its Editor is a Catholic who believes in God. The masthead is named after Gerardus Mercator, the C16th cradle Catholic cartographer.

MercatorNet's About webpage opines that "religion adds clarity and conviction to the task of defending human dignity" — as if that's an exclusive province or even necessary feature of "religion" — and insists that arguments it publishes are "based on universally accepted moral principles, common sense and evidence, not faith."

Pfft.

Another invitation to "dig here"

Methinks they doth protest too much. It doesn't take much effort to peel back the veneer of neutrality.

MercatorNet is a trading name of the company New Media Foundation Ltd. (For reference, another of its trading names is BioEdge, which has the same Editor as MercatorNet, but we'll get to that later.) It's a company limited by guarantee; a registered charity established in 2005 and based in NSW.

Oddly, its 2019 ACNC records claim 2 full-time and 10 casual employees for a full-time equivalent (FTE) of 5. However, their total payroll expenditure as lodged, "Editor fees", was less than $38k. But If FTE is 5, then that's an average of just $7,600 per full-time annum. A minimum wage of $16/h over a year, without holiday leave, would equate to around $27k per person, times 5 would make a total minimum lawful payroll budget of $135k per annum. Hmmm.

Other major expenses were website maintenance and hosting ($26k), paying contributors ($18k), and insurance ($4k).

The company's bare-bones website mysteriously states only that its mission is "to help people navigate modern complexities in a way that respects the fullness of human dignity."

Of its masthead MercatorNet, the company’s website says only that the outlet is "dignitarian" and "doesn't want to be trapped on one or the other side of the culture wars". Of its BioEdge masthead it says that it's "completely independent".

Double pfft.

Who controls the company?

According to ASIC's records, the four registered Directors of New Media Foundation Ltd are Romano and Francine Pirola, Jude Hennessy and Michael Cook. Romano Pirola is the Chairperson, yet it is Michael Cook and Jude Hennessy who signed off the company's latest financial statements. Who are these people?

Romano Pirola and his wife Mavis were Joint Chairs of the Australian Catholic Marriage and Family Council, which advises the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. They were appointed by the Pope in 2014 as one of just 14 married couples worldwide to participate in the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family. They've been awarded the church's honour of Knight and Dame of the order of St Gregory for services to the Church, and in 2016 were awarded honorary doctorates by Australian Catholic University.

Francine Pirola is the wife of Byron Pirola, Romano and Mavis Pirola's son. Francine and Byron were awarded honours by Pope Francis in 2019, are directors of the Catholic Marriage Resource Centre (which, incidentally, acknowledges that Catholic wedding numbers have been falling for 25 years) and were joint Chairs (like Byron's parents before them) of the Australian Catholic Marriage and Family Council. They've even represented the Australian Catholic Bishops at meetings of the Pontifical Council of the Family.

They're also the couple whose investment company loaned anti-marriage-equality lobby group Marriage Alliance $1.67m in support of anti-LGBTI flyers handed out to children on school buses. The Crikey exposé makes further interesting reading.

Jude Hennesy is director of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong. It's responsible for "special religious education" in state schools.

Michael Cook is Editor of both MercatorNet and BioEdge. He's been a member of the devout lay Catholic group, Opus Dei for more than four decades. Unlike MercatorNet's About page, BioEdge's own About page doesn't mention religious links of any kind, and says it's "completely independent".

All four directors of MercatorNet's controlling company are very deeply and strongly invested in the Catholic church. One of them, Michael Cook, is its Editor.

MercatorNet's remit

Back in October 2016 I did a keyword breakdown of articles published by MercatorNet. In the then 11 years of its existence, assuming no articles were taken down, it had published more than 2,000 articles containing the word "Catholic". That's a lot for a small outlet: an average of 3.5 "Catholic" articles a week, every week, for 11 years.

In comparison, there were no articles containing the word "Anglican", and just 51 containing the expression "Church of England". There were also 121 mentioning "Hindu", and 868 mentioning "Islam", with many of those negative.

New Media Foundation Ltd's ACNC record indicates its qualifying charitable purpose is "advancing education". But publishing thousands of articles mentioning religion, most of them Catholic, would seem to more fully reflect the qualifying charitable purpose of "advancing religion". But they chose "advancing education" instead — which bypasses any mention of religion.

Tellingly, every visit to and search on the MercatorNet website currently results in a pop-up that invites you to join their "influential community of truth-tellers" to "push back against post-modern relativism". That "relativism" is a pet peeve (and language) of the Catholic church.
 

MercatorNet  attacks post-modern relativism: a pet peeve of the Catholic church, to be countered by "truth-tellers".

MercatorNet headlines the Catholic church's pet peeve: post-modern relativism. This is hardly surprising given its controlling company is run by Opus Dei members, Catholic church staff, and church honours recipients.

The founding of New Media Foundation Ltd

When it was founded in 2005, New Media Foundation Ltd's registered address was 296 Drummond Street, Carlton, Victoria. Significant? Decide for yourself.

That's the address of the Drummond Study Centre. And its connection? "Spiritual activities in the centre are entrusted to Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Catholic Church." Notice how the centre's name doesn't mention "Catholic" or even religion in any way, either. You have to delve through its web pages to find out.

Previous directors

Similarly, the list of former New Media Foundation Ltd company directors adds to its storyline.

One is Mr Richard Vella, who is or was the spokesperson for Opus Dei in Australia. He describes his personal relationship with God as "the greatest love of my life". Another is Fr Phillip Elias, who was ordained into Opus Dei in Rome in 2017.

Another founding director was Fr Amin Abboud, who died in 2013 and was given a full requiem mass funeral at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, presided over by church officials including Monsignor Victor Martinez, the then Regional Vicar of Opus Dei for Australia and New Zealand.

Yet another is Carolyn Moynihan, Deputy Editor of MercatorNet and frequent contributor to Crisis Magazine, "a voice for faithful Catholic laity" and a contributor to the Catholic Exchange. She rails repeatedly against the harms of marriage equality.

Get the picture?

New Media Foundation Ltd and its masthead MercatorNet's Catholic underpinnings are deep and strong.

The roots of the garden

But if you think it might simply be a small bunch of enthusiastic individuals, think again. This veritable garden of fertile Catholic plants arose from somewhere.

Where might that be? I've already pointed out seeding strategies for non-clerical commentary promoted by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher. It's also worth pointing out that, like any other major institution that seeks to influence public policy, the Catholic church in Australia maintains a whole media and communications department.

Further, the Australian Catholic Media Council hosted the triennial Australian Catholic Communications Congress in 2018, which notably for the first time ever was held together with the Australasian Catholic Press Association (ACPA) Conference. ACPA's brief is to "give voice to Catholic perspectives on the issues of our societies". Former Vatican journalist Greg Erlandson delivered the keynote address to the joint conference, and masterclasses were held to "hone particular skills".

Not a recent phenomenon

If you think this just a recent phenomenon you'd be mistaken. Back issues of the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, prove most enlightening.

At least as far back as the eighties, through the nineties and the noughties, the Vatican has been vigorous in its promotion of media engagement across Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas. For example, in March 1990 Pope John Paul II noted "unprecedented opportunities" to proclaim the word of God via media channels in central and eastern Europe.

In the same year, Archbishop John Foley, then President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, told media workers at a Catholic world congress not to "falsely" compartmentalise their lives into private piety versus professional work subjected to commercial pressure, but instead spread Catholic "truth". He also schooled filmmakers amongst the gathering that "great films are 'at least implicitly religious'".

The Vatican and its 'authorities' repeatedly cajole Catholics into "truth-telling", which means evangelising the church's stances.

Ongoing evangelisation focus

Pope John Paul II repeated his firm wish for more mass media coverage in a major address in 1992, and a follow-on note in the same year encouraged USA Catholic journalists to "put their professional skills at the service of the Gospel".
 

The Catholic church believes the mass media needs a Catholic presence.

In another example in 1993 Pope John Paul II emphasised how new media — then videotapes and audiocassettes — could serve the "new evangelisation". And in 2002, he again implored Catholics to adopt the latest new media — the Internet — in "proclaiming the Gospel". Two years later MercatorNet was launched online, as were other similar sites.

And if there was any doubt as to what Catholic communications services were for, in October 2012, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a major address confirming that "the church exists to evangelise".

That's just a few of the many.

Media for the faithful

Back in Australia, B. A. Santamaria established the AD2000 journal in the late 1980s. It's an obviously Catholic publication published by the Thomas Moore Centre in Melbourne. A quality journal aimed squarely at and informative to Catholic adherents, it is of limited interest to the general public. What reaches the general public is mainstream media.

But "Houston, we have a problem"...

Mainstream media a "problem"

In a revealing narrative, loyal Catholic Professor Margaret Somerville, now at the (Catholic) University of Notre Dame Australia, laid out the critical importance of the media to the outcome of VAD law reform in her 2001 book Death Talk: The case against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (especially see Chapter 19).

In it, she highlights the Catholic communications problem (without mentioning Catholicism), railing against what she claimed even then was the mostly "small-l liberal" mainstream media as resistant to religious messages. She confirmed that religious media are much more accommodating of the "pro-life" world view.

She specifically noted the importance of "framing" the issues to "significantly influence political decisions", complaining that "anti-euthanasia arguments do not make dramatic and compelling television". She then went on to outline a collection of useful anti-VAD "frames", which were wholly consistent with the Vatican's position and language.

Indeed, you'd be forgiven for thinking Professor Somerville wrote the church's framings, because she's given pre-eminent billing over the Vatican itself in the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth's website for bioethics, the LJ Goody Bioethics Centre. Of further relevance is that the Catholic Archbishop of Perth is, along with the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, the ultimate authority controlling the University of Notre Dame Australia, where Somerville is a Professor.

(Incidentally, the website's home page "What's new" announcement is more than 5½ years out of date, which gives the impression that the Centre was a hasty, event-specific confection whose purpose has long since passed.)
 

Professor Margaret Somerville gets pre-eminent billing on Catholic bioethics, above the Vatican itself.

Don't mention the war religion

Amongst Professor Somerville's numerous writings slamming VAD, some stand out more than others. One that does is a 2008 editorial titled Death talk in a secular age, in which she vigorously encourages religious opponents to "formulate a moral argument against euthanasia without resorting to religion" [my emphasis]. And who published this editorial? Why, it was MercatorNet!

Did the Catholic church take note of Professor Somerville's strategy? As I've pointed out before, Mr Ben Smith, Director of the Life, Marriage and Family Office at the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart, fails to mention who he really is in at least two purportedly "independent" groups fulminating against Tasmania's current VAD Bill. One of the groups he leads, Live & Die Well, encourages people to write objections to their parliamentarians, but expressly commands "DO NOT use religious arguments."

Professor Somerville was also a keynote speaker at a 2008 conference of media professionals in Toronto, in which she advised journalists and editors how to "frame" the debate against VAD. But these were not just any journalists and editors at large. They were Catholic journalists and editors: members of the Association of Roman Catholic Communicators of Canada, whom she schooled alongside a number of Catholic church officials. The conference's title? "Proclaim it from the rooftops!"

Catholic Professor Margaret Somerville has been central to the Catholic church's hostile "framing" of VAD, and helping media specialists spread that framing through the media.

More religious frustrations

Over the years Professor Somerville continued to build upon the theme, including in her 2015 book, Bird on an Ethics Wire: Battles about values in the culture wars. She escalated her criticism of the "intense tolerance" of "the now ubiquitous moral relativism" as an illustration of how VAD law reform demonstrates what happens "if we take a purely secular approach not balanced by religious views."

A curated garden

You will have noticed by now significant common threads in favour of Catholic "truth"; against "relativism"; calls to evangelise using the media; calls to avoid and actual avoidance of religion in argumentation; avoidance of revealing religious connections in by-lines; and a united portfolio of Church-friendly framings of VAD by a busy theatre of players.

Given the church's perceptions of a hostile mainstream media, is it any wonder that some devout Catholic contributors, and deeply Catholic media outlets, hide their religious petticoats and zucchetti while publishing grave misinformation in the curry of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) against VAD?

This isn't a random jungle.

No, it's a curated garden, tended to by what we might call the 'Catholic communicators guild'.

Failure to mention deep Catholic roots behind purported "secular" attacks on VAD law reform is a strategy of the 'Catholic communicators guild'.

Conclusion

In this review, I've revealed only some of the deep Catholic connections that resulted in a shocking appropriation of the death of an elderly woman with cancer, using misinformation and framing wholly consistent with the Catholic church's evangelisation, but withholding key information about those deep religious underpinnings.

It's clear the Catholic church understands that its religious arguments are unpersuasive to the wider community. It's also important that the public and legislators understand how religious forces attempt to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt about VAD law reform by giving the appearance of secular neutrality to its messages.

Mrs Dugdale’s gran deserved better than to be appropriated for the aggrandisement of an agenda that is clearly at odds with her own beliefs and values… and the values of the overwhelming majority of Australians.

May she rest in peace.

 

Keywords: 

Fearmonger | Filibuster | Fudge | Fiction | Faith | Australia | Religion | Catholic | Claim response | Legislation | Rhetoric | Rhetoric: Suicide | Rhetoric: The 'vulnerable'

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