Defiant doctor risks jail to honour right to die promise

‘I have promised Bernard if his suffering becomes too great I will be there’. Doctor will risk deregistration, jail to honour his promise to a dying man.

Doctor risks jail to help dying man

THE Melbourne doctor ordered to stop giving end of life advice and care to a terminally ill man says he will honour his promise to — even if it means being deregistered and going to jail.

Dr Rodney Syme’s story with 70-year-old Bernard Erica airs on Australian Story tonight. Last month, after being told of the relationship between the pair, the Medical Board of Australia held an urgent hearing and ruled Dr Syme must not engage in end of life care.

Previously Dr Syme has been questioned by legal authorities about helping people to end their lives, but never charged.

The board ordered Dr Syme, the Vice President of Dying With Dignity Victoria, not to do anything that has the “primary purpose of ending a person’s life”.

But Dr Syme reiterated this morning he will not desert Mr Erica (who has tongue and lung cancer) and will honour his promise to give him illegal sedative Nembutal to end his life.

“I spoke with Bernard this morning. We have become very good friends,” Dr Syme said.

“I am placed in a very difficult position where I have promised Bernard if his suffering becomes too great I will be there.

“My strong hope is that there is somebody out there who has some extra Nembutal that they will provide to Bernard.

“If you get it online you usually get twice the dose that you need. There would be people out there who probably have a bit of spare Nembutal and they might think “I think I can help Bernard’ and if that’s the case, that’s fantastic (if) it gets me off the hook.

“I don’t want to lose my licence to practice medicine. But I am going to support Bernard and if nobody comes forward with medication I will be there for him.”

“I will be there one way or the other at the end of his life if he wants me there. That is my responsibility.”

Bernard Erica - Dr Rodney Syme has been told not to advise him. Picture: Australian Story Picture: Jackie Cohen

Dr Syme, an 80-year-old urologist, has in the past 20 years given Nembutal or other medication to about 100 people with “unbearable pain and suffering so they could end their life at a time of their choosing’’.

His determination goes back to the mid-1970s, when he treated a patient with incurable spine cancer.

He could hear screams of pain echoing through the hospital as she entered the lobby.

“She had kidney cancer which had spread into her spine and the spine had collapsed, causing terrible nerve pain,” he said.

“I formed the view that if I had that degree of suffering — which could only be relieved by an anaesthetic that I would have ended my own life.

“And I thought ‘that’s OK I’m a doctor, I have access to the drugs and colleagues — I could do all that’. But my patients couldn’t have that help and I thought that was wrong.”

Fast forward to 2016 and Dr Syme is appealing the Board’s ruling.

“The board decided I was a serious risk and put a condition on my registration that I should not provide medical treatment for the primary purpose of ending a person’s life.

Dr Rodney Syme. Australian Story. Picture: Jackie Cohen

“Well it’s never been my primary purpose. My primary purpose has been to palliate suffering.

“They say I’m a risk to Bernard. I’m no bloody risk to Bernard at all. ‘First do no harm’ is fine, but if you leave a person to suffer you are doing tremendous harm.”

He says he would be giving Mr Erica the dignity of control.

“He wants to have control over the end of his life which I find to be totally reasonable,” Dr Syme said.

“Bernard wanted to die in his own home in his own time under his own steam, taking responsibility for what happened at the end of his life.

“Providing a person with control is one of the most powerful palliative tools that medicine has.”

Dr Syme’s critics ask what gives him the right to decide.

“That’s rubbish. I don’t decide. I have never given anyone a lethal injection,” he said.

“I just provide people with medication. They make the decision entirely.

“In 30 per cent of cases where Nembutal is provided to patients they don’t use it.

“It is peace of mind which has allowed them to actually go onto a natural death.

“If I provide it, it doesn’t mean to say they will use it to end their life. “It’s their intention that matters, not mine.”

Australian Story: My Conscience Tells Me, 8pm Monday, ABC & iview

Originally published as Defiant doctor risks jail to honour right to die promise