Andrew Denton

You can't get much more aggressive or stigmatic than that and it astonishes me that a man of Christian faith who marches under the banner of mercy would use such aggressive and ugly language about medical professionals helping people at the end of their life.

There's a lot of other problems too.

We did a survey of most of Australia's aged care providers in each state and nationally to see what kind of information they provide about VAD and only 5% for providers

provide full information about VAD.

So there's an institutional reluctance to talk about this.

Doctors are often dismissive or sometimes openly hostile towards people and make requests because of their personal beliefs.

And even in the Aged Care Act, which was rewritten and re-legislated last year, despite repeated entreaties from ourselves and others, within the definition of end-of-life care, there's no mention of VAD.

So this flows down, and the kind of behaviour we see sometimes is inexcusable.

Well, there's a number of reasons.

First of all, the law itself, the process is not meant to be easy to get through.

It's meant to be careful and deliberative.

And that's as it should be.

And not everyone chooses to proceed.

It's a choice.

And some people choose palliative care.

Some people feel just having that control was sufficient for them, so they don't choose to proceed.

But there's also the other factors, as I was mentioning before.

hostility and obfuscation from doctors when asked.

There's a fine line between conscientious objection, which the law allows as it should, and conscientious obstruction.

I spoke to a man in Sydney last year who died of cancer.