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Chapter 1: What led James Valentine to discuss his cancer diagnosis publicly?
Well, this is a bit of a strange moment for me and probably for you as well. I have to tell you something. There's something I have to share that has been going on in my life and that I now have to tell you about because I'm not going to be here for a few months. I've got to go off and deal with something. And the thing I've got to go off and deal with is cancer. I've got a cancer and I'm
From his diagnosis with esophageal cancer in 2024 to openly wrestling with end-of-life decisions, beloved ABC broadcaster and long-time voice of Sydney Afternoons, James Valentine, took his listeners along with him as he stared down his own death.
I'm James Valentine and this season we're talking about death or on this episode why we don't talk about it enough.
Now after his passing that openness continues with James's decision to share the fact that he ended his life through voluntary assisted dying or VAD.
He was able to to do the VAD which was really important to him so we were all able to be together and just you know yeah it was really beautiful. In his final moments he was um still concerned about making a difference and that was something that was so important to him that we mentioned that.
I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to 7am. Today, Go Gentle Australia founder Andrew Denton on James's decision and why some Australians still have trouble accessing VAD despite it being legal in all but one Australian territory. It's Wednesday, April 29. Andrew, you knew James Valentine and had spoken to him about voluntary assisted dying.
How did that conversation go and could you tell us about how open he was while facing death?
About a year before James died, I did a remarkable podcast conversation with him and a clinical psychologist, Dr. Kerry Noonan, which in James's inimitable style, he titled, Let's Talk About Death, Baby. And we spoke very openly about the difficulty of confronting death, the way conversations shut down around it, about how to have those conversations.
And about what happens after people die and how to have those conversations. And it was remarkably raw because of James's situation. He was in between his first cancer treatment and he had gone into remission. But at the end of the conversation, and I remember very clearly, I could see James getting emotional. And I asked him, I said, what are you feeling right now, James?
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Chapter 2: How did James Valentine choose to end his life?
And you still grieve. Death is still the loss it will always be. But at least you know that that person has died in as merciful a fashion as is possible, and that you've been part of that, and you have helped them with their final wishes. So I think all that informed James's choice and the family's willingness to be so public about it.
And as you said, his family, they've spoken about how special the time was leading up to his death because they knew it was coming. Is that a common feeling for families in this sort of situation?
We often hear this about people that choose VAT, that even if they were unsure about the process or unsure about the original choice of the person going through it, they deeply value the fact that they were able to have that time without the levels of distress and collapse that I was describing before. I've learned there's a scarier C word than cancer, Nicole, and that's cascade.
And sometimes at the end of life, you're... medical condition can really accelerate out of control and the great value of VAD, the choice of that, is it gives you the offer of control. Even if things accelerate very quickly, if you have that medication there with you or if you have access to that medication, you can still make things happen in a way that you want them to be.
I'm just thinking of a young man whose local palliative care service and nurses did an extraordinary job. They facilitated him dying on the beach, which is where he wanted to die. He'd grown up near the beach. You know, I think for myself, gee, wouldn't I like to go with perhaps a decent cheeky cocktail and a nice sunset and beautiful music and
My football team having won the premiership, that might be a bit hard. But isn't that what we want? We want to die as who we are, not as a shell of who we are.
Coming up, the barriers still standing in the way of voluntary assisted dying.
Andrew, voluntary assisted dying is now legal in every state except the Northern Territory, but it still doesn't feel like something that Australians are really comfortable talking about. Why is that, do you think? And what examples have you seen of that kind of taboo playing out in our healthcare systems and in aged care?
It's an enforced taboo still. I mentioned earlier the people that oppose this law, that it's always been their line to describe this as suicide, which has a very different meaning in society.
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Chapter 3: What was the significance of James's conversations about voluntary assisted dying?
But when he asked them to support his application, they just stonewalled him. And they stonewalled him for months. And he got to a point where in tears, he said to his oncologist, I'm dying. please, I need this information. And at the end, they gave him the information, and he immediately switched to somebody that would support his case.
And when you consider the fact that the Catholic Church still provides a lot of Australian health care and is deeply opposed to VAD, they describe it as intrinsically evil. They are concerned if they are seen to support VAD, that will affect their career prospects. And when you have, as I said, Archbishop Anthony Fisher describing VAD doctors as kill teams,
you get a sense of how that pressure might flow through to people that may support VAD within the Catholic health system, but are afraid to say so.
Andrew, your organisation, Go Gentle Australia, is campaigning for telehealth to be an option for patients who want to go through this process. Why do you think that's so important?
Well, it's a matter of equity, really. Not all sick people live near a doctor. Not all sick people live near a hospital. The problem with telehealth, it's a strange one, really, because it refers to a thing called the Commonwealth Criminal Code.
And it's an amendment that was written in 2005, long before IVAD laws existed, saying that it's illegal to use a carriage service to encourage or assist in suicide. But as I mentioned before, state's law and leading suicide prevention organizations do not see VAD as suicide. They are different things.
However, this law has been interpreted in different states to mean that doctors can't use telehealth or Zoom or email or even a text to discuss or advise parts of the VAD process. In some states, they have to use snail mail to send a prescription. This is a very anomalous law, which should have nothing to do with VAD.
And everybody from the state's attorneys generals to health ministers to the AMA has petitioned the federal attorney general, Michelle Rowland, To fix this law, it's a pretty easy fix. You just remove VAD from the definition of suicide in the law. But complete silence. You know, I find it hard to understand. The Prime Minister has always been supportive of this law.
He came to the launch of Go Gentle at the National Press Club a decade ago. It's causing unnecessary harm and it's difficult to understand why the government won't act on what is a relatively easy fix.
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