As Queensland and NSW politicians prepare to consider new voluntary assisting dying (VAD) laws, Professors Ben White and Lindy Willmott from QUT's Australian Centre for Health Law Research have released a policy briefing summarising their VAD research undertaken over the past 20 years.
- Two more states are about to vote on voluntary assisted dying laws
- Two decades of research explored legal, ethical, political and practical VAD issues.
- VAD debates must be evidence-based
"Our first paper on voluntary assisted dying actually looked at how Queensland politicians would exercise a conscience vote. Now, some 20 years later, Queensland's politicians are just about to do exactly that," Professor Willmott said.
"This body of research examines a broad spectrum of the legal, ethical, political and practical issues in voluntary assisted dying.
"VAD debates should be evidence-based but this can be challenging when that evidence is in research that is often complex or written mainly for specialist audiences.
Professor White said: "Our role as academics is to support evidence-based debate and this includes sharing research findings with community and political audiences."
Professor White said he and Professor Willmott had distilled all of the research on voluntary assisted dying into nine key points.
"Our first point is that Australia should have voluntary assisted dying laws: they are ethical and VAD can be safely regulated. Another is that voluntary assisted dying laws must be evidence-based," Professor White said.
The two-page policy briefing is available here:
The nine key points from Professors White and Willmott's VAD research are:
- Australia should have VAD laws: they are ethical and VAD can be safely regulated.
- VAD laws must be evidence-based and consistent with intended policy goals.
- There is now a broad "Australian VAD model" but each jurisdiction should pass a law most appropriate for its circumstances.
- Designing VAD laws requires seeing how the entire legal framework operates.
- "Piling on" ad hoc safeguards to already sound VAD laws does not make laws safer and can make them worse.
- VAD systems must be workable so eligible patients can access VAD.
- The Commonwealth Criminal Code must be changed: it is an unjust barrier for patients seeking VAD and their doctors
- Institutions should not have power to prevent their patients or permanent residents from accessing VAD.
- Effective implementation of VAD is challenging but very important.
