Sister’s call to ban ‘exit’ book

A WOMAN who watched her 39-year-old sister die in Mexico has called for restrictions on Dr Philip Nitschke’s end-of-life advice.

A WOMAN who watched her 39-year-old sister die an agonising death in Mexico after receiving “death-coaching” has called for Dr Philip Nitschke’s end-of-life advice to be withdrawn from general circulation.

Perth mother-of-four Erin Berg had been an involuntary patient suffering acute postnatal depression when she travelled to Mexico in 2008 to buy the Nitschke-recommended euthanasia drug Nembutal.

Erin died after 10 days in a coma in a Tijuana hospital.

Ms Doyle says her sister received similar assistance from Dr Nitschke as Lucas Taylor, a 26-year-old language teacher, who died as a result of “death coaching” by Nitschke’s Exit International online site, the Peaceful Pill Forum.

Erin had secretly withdrawn from her local library Nitschke’s book, Killing Me Softly: Voluntary Euthanasia and the Peaceful Pill, underlining passages that she believed would help her.

“We confirmed with Exit International that there was a written record of her speaking to one of the nurses who was manning the phones, and asking about the use of Nembutal,” Ms Doyle said. “Erin presented herself as a cancer victim, but she was in fact severely mentally ill.”

After her death, Doyle and her sister Chris unsuccessfully lobbied then attorney-general Robert McLelland for Dr Nitschke’s book to be withdrawn from general circulation.

“We are not seeking to restrict freedom of speech,” she says. “But we feel that Exit International peddles dangerous and grossly inaccurate information to vulnerable people.”

“Nitschke talks about a ‘peaceful death’ and how it is a foolproof drug. But Erin’s was a horrible death.”

She says online advice by Exit International is still promoting such dangerous overseas options. Dr Nitschke told The Australian in 2008 that Erin had been barred from attending his end-of-life workshops because they were “restricted to people aged 50 years or over, with no psychiatric condition, and who are terminally ill”.

This week he was suspended by the Medical Board of Australia after he admitted supporting Nigel Brayley, 45, whom he knew was not terminally ill, in his decision to end his life. Dr Nitschke has said “serial killer” Brayley made a “rational decision” to end his own life.