Better Off Dead
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Better Off Dead
Andrew Denton investigates the stories, moral arguments and individuals woven into discussions about why good people are dying bad deaths in Australia.
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33 эпизодов
Bonus Episode 14: Last Words: Voluntary Assisted Dying
Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying law came into effect in June 2019. The first of its kind in Australia and touted as the most conservative in the w...
#13 Unintended Consequences
When Victoria’s VAD law was passed in 2017, it was touted by Premier Daniel Andrews as ‘the most conservative in the world’. This was true. Its 68 saf...
#12 A Cry For Help
Whether it is through the words of the pope, his representatives the bishops and archbishops, or its surrogates in the medical profession, the Catholi...
#11 The End of Life Lottery
The assisted dying debate in Australia has revealed two parallel universes. The conservative Christian universe, which believes our lives belong to Go...
#10 We Who Walk Towards Death
At the heart of the political debate around voluntary assisted dying lies palliative care. On one side sits the argument that it can effectively deal...
#9 The Light Under the Bushel
In September 2020, as Tasmania’s Upper House prepared to debate an Assisted Dying bill, an article appeared on the online publication Mercatornet. Abo...
#8 The Good Samaritan
The key word in Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying law is the first one: ‘voluntary’. By law, any doctor, nurse, or other health professional who con...
#7 The ‘C’ Word
There are many firsts in Betty King’s life. First female prosecutor for the state of Victoria. First female prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Austral...
#6 The Locked Box
Imagine turning up to work one day to discover flyers outside your office accusing you of being a ‘death peddler’ and an ‘Uber service for poison’.
#5 I Choose Not to Suffer
So much was said during Victoria’s parliamentary debate about the people who would choose voluntary assisted dying, were it to be made legal.
Th...
#4 Do No Harm
No group has done more to persuade politicians to oppose assisted dying in Australia over the last 20 years than doctors. Citing their Hippocratic Oat...
#3 Lucky Phil
“Thou shalt not kill” - The Sixth Commandment
Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying law was written to allow an eligible, terminally ill patient t...
#2 The Fire or The Fall
Warning: This episode of Better Off Dead contains references to suicide and self-harm. These include discussions about how some terminally ill people...
#1 The Belly of the Beast
Spurred by watching his own father die painfully, in 2015 Andrew Denton set out to investigate – why are good people being forced to die bad deaths? <...
Season 2 Trailer
Andrew Denton investigates the stories behind Victoria’s landmark Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) law: Who seeks to use it, and why? Who are the doctor...
#17 Why Do I Have to Go Through Hell to Get to Heaven?
20 years ago, four dying people were able to access the Northern Territory’s world-first law to help them die more mercifully, before the law itself w...
#16 Abandon Hope
Paul Russell — Photo: Supplied
My search for the truth about assisted dying began when I was invited to attend the HOPE International Symposium...
#15 Lawrie's Story
Of all the arguments against assisted dying, the most heartless I’ve heard is this:
Suicide is legal. Why do you need assistance to do somethin...
#14 Australia's Dark Little Secret
The repeated call by opponents of assisted dying is that the elderly and the vulnerable must be protected from coercion. In this, they are right – and...
#13 Now They're Killing Babies
Assisted dying has no more committed opponent than the Catholic Church. They have thrown resources, and the full weight of their political influence,...
#12 Velvet Ray
Ray Godbold is a palliative care nurse faced with terminal cancer – but he doesn’t want to die in palliative care.
Robyn and Ray Godbold — Photo...
#11 Whose life is it anyway?: palliative care in Australia, part 2
Associate Professor Richard Chye is the director of the Sacred Heart palliative care unit at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. A gifted physician and t...
#10 Neither hasten nor prolong death: palliative care in Australia, part 1
Speaking with doctors in Belgium, the Netherlands and Oregon, I’d learnt that in those places, palliative care and assisted dying are seen as things t...
#9 Why should one church decide for all of us? Death with dignity in Oregon
The success of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act – at 18 years, the world’s longest-running law of this kind – puts two things into sharp relief. Firstl...
#8 Darkness visible: Marjorie, Edith and Laura: Belgium, part 2
Shortly after arriving in Belgium, I learned of ‘Laura’ – a 24-year-old woman who had sought the right to be euthanised after years of unrelieved ment...
#7 The killing fields of Belgium: Belgium, part 1
If there is an epicentre for anti-euthanasia sentiment, it’s Belgium – home to what are often described as the most liberal euthanasia laws in the wor...
#6 Once you start killing, you can't stop: the Netherlands, part 2
For those who hold out the Netherlands as a textbook case of a ‘slippery slope’, they see a law originally designed to help the terminally ill – but t...
#5 The keys to life and death in someone else's hands: the Netherlands, part 1
The Netherlands’ euthanasia laws are the longest-running in Europe.
Surprisingly, the drive to create them didn’t come from politicians; it came...
#4 It can never be perfect, so why try and improve it?
Opponents of assisted dying in Australia want to leave things as they are, because of the worrying things they claim might happen if we did have a law...
#3 The 80-year-old outlaw
According to Canadian anti-euthanasia campaigner Alex Schadenberg, Melbourne doctor Rodney Syme is a threat to society: a ‘cowboy’ and ‘the worst of t...
#2 How dare you want to end your life: Liz's story
Liz is a dynamic 48 year-old businesswoman who’s dying of cancer. She wants to have a choice about how she dies because she’s been through palliative...
#1 The invasion of death
My name is Andrew Denton. I’m a writer and broadcaster who lives in Sydney, Australia.
In October 2015, I delivered a public address arguing for...
Welcome
Introducing Better Off Dead – a new podcast from Andrew Denton and the Wheeler Centre.
From early 2016, join us as Andrew investigates the stori...