DR RODNEY SYME HAS DIED AGED 86 AND THE WORLD IS POORER FOR THE LOSS OF THIS GREAT MAN

This article appeared in The Age after it had appeared in the SydneyMorning Herlad, which is a bit strange, seeing he was a Victorian and died in Victoria.

Vale Dr Rodney Syme

‘He was fearless’: Prominent euthanasia campaigner Rodney Syme dies

By Melissa Cunningham
22 October 2021

Prominent euthanasia advocate Rodney Syme has been remembered as compassionate and fearless man who spent decades fighting for the right for terminally ill people dying intolerable deaths to end their own lives.

Dr Syme, 86, died on Wednesday after recently suffering a stroke.

Doctor Rodney Syme. Credit:Simon Schluter

The Melbourne surgeon was a veteran of the voluntary assisted dying campaign in Australia and was internationally acclaimed for his work in the right-to-die movement.

His son Bruce Syme described his dad as a selfless humanitarian, whose strength of character and integrity and humility was impossible to measure.

Victorian Reason Party MP Fiona Patten paid tribute to the urologist on Friday and said Dr Syme was a trusted confidante and mentor, who was instrumental in the establishment of euthanasia laws in Victoria in 2017.

“There is no doubt that we would not have assisted dying laws in Australia today had it not been for Rodney Syme,” she said.

“His tenacity and compassion changed me as a person. I respond to legislation and I listen to people in a different way after spending time and learning from Rodney. He is an extraordinary person.”

She said the laws had meant hundreds of terminally ill Victorians have been able to end their pain and suffering at a time and place of their choosing.

Andrew Denton, who founded Go Gentle to advocate for voluntary assisted dying after his father’s slow and painful death, said he was filled with grief, at the loss of the “indefatigable and unbreakable” Dr Syme.

“The mighty oak has fallen,” he said. “There seems a vast, empty space in the forest where he once stood. That familiar, comforting shadow no longer cast.

“While his passing fills us with grief and we will miss him in our bones as mentor, friend, and guide, we carry with us in our veins Rodney’s life’s work.”

Dr Syme sat on Victoria’s Dying with Dignity Board, a group he established to lobby for euthanasia laws in Australia, until his death this week. As he pushed for law reform, Dr Syme risked criminal prosecution several ti

The board’s president Hugh Sarjeant said Dr Syme’s attack on what he deemed as “unjust laws” was a catalyst for change.

“He was fearless and his departure leaves a great legacy of success, to the benefit of so many Australians,” Mr Sarjeant said. “The loss of such a wise and kindly friend leaves us all the poorer.”

Vice president Jane Morris said Dr Syme’s empathy and desire to help those dying insufferable deaths knew no bounds. Dr Rodney Syme with cancer patient Bernard Erica in 2016.

Dr Rodney Syme with cancer patient Bernard Erica in 2016.Credit:Penny Stephens
“His generosity with his time, words and wise counsel was infinite,” she said. “He was there for anyone who reached out to him and made everyone he spoke to feel cared for and special.”

Dr Syme has previously said he had epiphany in 1974 after being unable to relieve the pain of a patient with cancer of the spine and was left haunted by her screams from the hospital floor above him.

“That had the most profound effect on me,” he said. “There was nothing we could do to relieve her agony. For the next 20 years, I thought very, very deeply. I studied the medical literature... formulating my views. I began to make public statements. As a consequence, complete strangers started to approach me.”

In 2005, he admitted on radio that he provided the cancer stricken Victorian man, Steve Guest, with Nembutal two weeks before he died, provoking an investigation into his medical conduct, and triggering a national debate on voluntary assisted dying.

“I’m not doing it quietly anymore,” he said at the time. “I’ve sailed close to the wind, no doubt about it, but the law is hypocritical and I’m not the only doctor who is operating in this murky terrain. It’s just that I’m prepared to say so publicly.”>

In 2016, the Australian Medical Board banned him from providing advice to terminally ill patients after he told ABC television program Australian Story that he’d offered to provide cancer patient Bernard Erica, who was in severe pain and dying of tongue and throat cancer, with Nembutal.

He successfully appealed the ban imposed on him by the Medical Board of Australia, aimed at stopping him from providing advice to terminally ill patients.

Former Victorian attorney-general Jill Hennessy, who introduced the state’s voluntary assisted dying legislation, said Dr Syme had left an indelible mark.

“I am so thankful for all he taught us, his compassion, decency and all the reform he helped propel,” she said.

Oncologist Cam Mclaren, who has helped more than two dozen people end their lives under Victoria’s euthanasia laws, said he was unsure if he would have had the courage to do so had it not been for Dr Syme.

“He gave me a lot of strength, particularly in the early days, to continue doing what I was doing,” he said. “What he has done has its own life force. He’s had this exponentially significant impact on end-of-life choices.“

In 2019, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to social welfare initiatives and to law reform. But in 2021, he announced he would return the honour after controversial former tennis great Margaret Court was promoted to the highest level of the Order of Australia.

Related Article Dr Rodney Syme and Bernard Erica who is dying of tongue and lung cancer.
Euthanasia advocate Rodney Syme challenges medical board over assisted death
In September, Dr Syme won the Health Professional Award for the healthcare worker who had created global change at the 18th World Federation of the Right to Die Societies in Chicago.

He continued to practise medicine well into his 80s and counselled thousands of terminally ill people throughout his medical career, while caring for his wife at home up until her death earlier this year.

In the later years of his life, he spoke to thousands of terminally ill people over the phone from his home in Yandoit in regional Victoria. He often spent hours counselling them and supporting them as they grappled with the fear of both physical and existential suffering. His book A Good Death recounts some of their stories.

Related Article Margaret Radmore is terminally ill. Exclusive Euthanasia 'I choose not to suffer': Margaret's choice to be one of the first Victorians to access assisted dying

Dr Syme is survived by his three children Bruce, Megan and Robin.

At Dr Syme’s request, there will be no funeral.

IN SUPPORT OF DR RODNEY SYME AND DYING WITH DIGNITY VICTORIA

My partner is 91 and I am 87. We are very fortunate in many respects, mainly concerning our physical and mental health.
We do not own a car and are fortunate enough to own our own house which we maintain in reasonable order - it doesn't get cleaned and vacuumed as much or as often as it probably needs - but it is tidy and clean enough so that when people visit us the house does not resemble a pig sty!

We do our own cooking and don't get any help for anything around the house including the garden, which is small, and when the grass needs mowing - which with our drought conditions doesn't happen as often as it used to when we moved to Melbourne from New South Wales 13 years ago - friends had given us an electric mower as a house warming gift and it has been a fantastic help!

The tram to the city is two corners away, there are two buses down the road, and if we need to, a train to the city is within a 25-minute walk from the house.

We have a post box at a post office which is now about 30 minutes' walk away - it used to be about 20 minutes in the old days! - and Preston Market is about a 25 minute walk each way and we do most of our food and grocery shopping once a week there - with a shopping trolley!

So, why worry about euthanasia?

Well, because we are the ages we now are, we have seen many friends and relatives dying of diseases which have caused untold pain and suffering and they have often died agonising deaths in terrible situations.

In the 1990s, when the AIDS epidemic was still at its height, we were both carers for people living with, and dying from AIDS-related diseases which were horrifying and frightening to witness - and to be part of the caring process for.

We are also aware that many doctors treating these patients were often in despair over how to alleviate the suffering of so many - mostly young - people at the time - mostly in their twenties and thirties - and when matters became desperate for the doctors and the patients, the patients often requested - and were helped with - euthanasia in one form or another.

At that time, from the mid 1980s to about 1997 when multiple therapies became available and converted inevitable death into a chronic but liveable condition, dozens of people with AIDS asked for and were given medications to hasten death.

If the people involved in these situations at the time had been prosecuted on the grounds of euthanasia - doctors, nurses, friends, relatives - the courts would have been over-crowded and the legal bills would have been inordinately large.

Authorities knew what was happening and chose to turn a blind eye to the events occurring virtually on a daily basis at the time.

We don't know what will happen to us in the time left to us, but we have done our best, under existing laws, to cover our requirements at the end of life period with such items as legal and medical powers of attorney and our requirements when life quality becomes unbearable and we feel we have had enough and don't want to suffer any longer.

We want euthanasia to be an option available to people in our circumstances and we support Dr Rodney Syme and Dying With Dignity Victoria and similar organisations and practitioners throughout the country.

Our politicians are cowards, and none have the guts to treat this matter as urgent and immediate.

SEE ALSO:

Euthanasia Part 1

and links to the following parts: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8