Note: the report is now published here. Further, both Oregon and Washington state rankings for suicide rates have improved , not deteriorated, since their DWDAs came into effect, while the suicide ranking for a relevant control state — Oklahoma — has deteriorated substantially over the same time. Last year, the Victorian Parliament's Legal and Social Issues Committee concluded an extensive investigation into end of life choices, publishing a report of over pages recommending improvements to palliative care and for assisted dying.
However, his report contains multiple, serious cases of misinformation. He must withdraw his report. It forms not only a sound academic and rigorous approach but also, by implication, is damning of the narrow, outcome focus of the Majority Report. Note that Belgian data is for the years —15, but the Netherlands only for the years — We might notice, however, that the dicrepancy has the consequence of making his claims look 'better. As you can see, there is a virtual flatline between and Indeed, there is even a tiny drop in numbers between — It also substantially reduces the compound annual growth rate he wrongly quotes for just — It's necessary because the total deaths count goes down and mostly up a bit each year.
When you calculate the rates , you get validly-comparable results, as I illustrate in Figure 4. Figure 4: Rate of assisted dying as a percent off all deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium — Sources: Official government statistics; Euthanasia Commission reports.
As I explain in my detailed research whitepaper on Benelux assisted dying, 5 these are sigmoid stretched-S shaped curves which are typical of human behaviour change.
My Benelux whitepaper also reports the data from Luxembourg Figure 5 , which Mr Mulino fails to mention, even though it has legislation, since , almost identical to the Netherlands and Belgium, and the Luxembourg government's data is freely available online. Figure 5: Rate of assisted dying in the three lawful Benelux countries Sources: Official government statistics; Euthanasia Commission reports.
Mr Mulino again fails to compare apples with apples. Take, for example, his vocal claim that the annual total death counts for the Netherlands decreased at the same time as the total counts for assisted dying increased. Of what possible relevance is the total death data for —02, while his total deaths data for —15 is missing? I illustrate the full story in Figure 6. Figure 6: Netherlands total and assisted deaths for different periods Sources: Official government statistics; Euthanasia Commission reports.
The solid blue and orange lines are data Mr Mulino used and reported, and their dotted ends are data that he omitted. Valid comparison gives lie to his claim. This assertion is nonchalantly plucked from the review 6 without reading it properly, seemingly to support his thesis. In fact, the source does the exact opposite. Figure 7 is an image of the Abstract, where it says in large print, right up front:.
It's not like the information was hard to find — his report cites literally half a sentence to support his claim, when the full sentence says the opposite. In attempting to establish a 'slippery slope' from voluntary, to non-voluntary euthanasia NVE — a practice where doctors may hasten death e.
Oh dear, Mr Mulino's report cherry-picks again. Just look at his source. Firstly , look at the table. Thirdly , if Mr Mulino had read the study properly instead of just cherry-picking convenient figures from it, he would have noticed in the methodology section that the fieldwork doctors filling in questionnaires was completed in and early , that is, before either the Netherlands or Belgian Acts came into effect later in the Netherlands in April and Belgium in September. To really establish causation, as a minimum you have to assess longitudinal data, which I show in Figure 9.
Both the Dutch and Belgian NVE rates have dropped with high statistical significance since their euthanasia Acts came into effect. This is consistent with assisted dying law reform shining a bright light on all end of life practices. Not only that, but the official transcript of my appearance as an expert witness before the parliamentary Committee confirms that Mr Mulino specifically quizzed me on that Figure 19 and I pointed out the sources of its data: The last sentence on the previous page gives you the citations for that data.
Calls to both Mr Mulino's electorate office and to the Parliament of Victoria confirm there is no "M Macdonald" at either. Mr Macdonald is also listed as the CAM's official contact person in its submission opposing assisted dying to the Victorian Parliament's inquiry into end of life choices.
The CAM parliamentary submission was authorised and signed by Episcopal Vicars Anthony Ireland and Anthony Kerin, who also appeared as witnesses before the parliamentary Committee, during which they told, as I've explained, a whopping great falsehood about Oregon. Mr Mulino needs to explain himself, since regardless of who authoried it, he signed it off in his own name and is therefore ultimately responsible for it.
Given the multiple fundamental errors, the honourable course for Mr Mulino to pursue is to withdraw his minority report. Mr Mulino — as well as Mrs Peulich who also wrote a minority report against assisted dying — declined to join other members of the parliamentary Committee on an official overseas fact-finding tour to jurisdictions where assisted dying is lawful.
This was a critical opportunity for Committee members to directly quiz proponents, opponents, researchers, regulators, legislators and others with direct experience. It would have given them invaluable opportunities to directly examine and test assumptions, hypotheses and performance. How curious then that these two non-participataing Committee members each furnished a minority report opposing the majority recommendation to legalise assisted dying in Victoria. He then goes on to quote some select statistics from said poll.
In his blog, he mentions nothing about the sponsorship or conduct of the poll. Mr Russell, while quoting statistics, has said absolutely nothing about the methodology — that I can find via a quite diligent search.
Results can only be interpreted in light of how the research was actually conducted, so quoting a 'study' while failing to publish its methodology in full is an absolute no-no. It only invites derision. All reported results must be in relation to properly disclosed methodology:. For example, in her book Bird on an Ethics Wire , in relation to the supposed but fanciful fear of being euthanized in the Netherlands if adequate pain management is accepted, Somerville says in Chapter And who is that someone?
Yet obviously she knows that the source is merely herself saying so. Even if they allege it twice or more. And happen cite themselves via someone else in the process. I provided ample evidence from lawful jurisdictions that comprehensively contradicts her claim.
She and her Catholic colleagues still hold onto several tenuous threads of information that might — just might — appear consistent with her theory, despite the truckloads of evidence to the contrary. One of those tenuous threads is that the general suicide rate in the Netherlands has increased from , around the same time that use of the Dutch euthanasia law also increased.
The general suicide rate previously fell as assisted dying rates increased. Unemployment in hard times is a known significant risk factor for suicide. The research looked at the Dutch assisted death and general suicide rates from through , separately for each of the five Euthanasia Commission reporting regions. As you can see, Region 3, which includes Amsterdam, had by far the greatest assisted death rate 3.
The authors, unusually, expressed suicides as a percentage of all deaths rather than per k population. Those figures are the average for — The results are shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: The Dutch assisted death rate and general suicide rate by region for Sources: Euthanasia Commission annual reports, Dutch Government statistics.
While region 1 the far north has the lowest assisted death rate 3. Conversely, region 3 which includes Amsterdam has by a very large factor the highest assisted dying rate 6.
NVE is where a doctor deliberately hastens the death of a patient without a current explicit request from the patient. Somerville claims that elderly Dutch citizens fear NVE — a slippery slope claim previously promoted by the Vatican. Hons in For more than two decades, Somerville has been a prominent national and international figure in the developing field of bioethics and the intersection of medicine, ethics, and the law. Somerville is also a prolific author, writing for both academic and general audiences.
Her topics range from the broad, including Do We Care? Somerville published her The Ethical Canary: Science, Society, and the Human Spirit hoping to foster public debate on some of the new ethical issues created by rapid developments in medical technologies.
In this book, Somerville sets out her own positions, and the counter-arguments against them, on such topics as euthanasia, cloning, and cross-species transplantation. She repeatedly asks two central questions: does the new technology demonstrate a respect for life; does it threaten the human spirit? Somerville has also maintained that it is an ethicist's job to help society pose questions on important contemporary issues, and she has therefore been in the forefront of a number of contentious debates.
For example, she has been a spokesperson for society's ethical obligation to provide safe injection sites for intravenous drug users.
She has also stated publicly her opinion that the legal definition of marriage should not be changed. Davies, B.
Volume 1 , Sage Power, K. D'Warte, J. Minichiello, V. Journal Articles Somerville, M. Powell, S. Crinall, S. Nordstrom, S. Chew, M. Hackett, A. Green, M. Place, identity formation and new teachers' learning', Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education , vol 33, no 2 , pp - Devos, A. Exploring issues of power and subjectivity in doctoral examination', Australian Universities' Review , vol 54, no 1 , pp 47 - Tomaney, J.
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