Philip Nitschke

Philip Haig Nitschke (born 8 August 1947) is an Australian humanist, author, former physician, and founder and director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International.

He campaigned successfully to have a legal euthanasia law passed in Australia's Northern Territory and assisted four people in ending their lives before the law was overturned by the Government of Australia.

Nitschke was the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection, after which the patient activated the syringe using a computer.

Nitschke states that he and his group are regularly subject to harassment by authorities.

Nitschke was born in 1947 in Ardrossan, South Australia, the son of school teachers Harold and Gweneth (Gwen) Nitschke.

Nitschke studied physics at the University of Adelaide, gaining a PhD from Flinders University in laser physics in 1972.

Rejecting a career in the sciences, he instead travelled to the Northern Territory to take up work with the Aboriginal land rights activist Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji at Wave Hill.

After the hand-back of land by the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, Nitschke became a Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife ranger.

However, after badly injuring his subtalar joint, which effectively finished his career as a ranger, he began studying for a medical degree.

In addition to having long been interested in studying medicine he has suffered from hypochondria most of his adult life and futilely hoped with his medical studies to educate himself out of the problem.

He graduated from the University of Sydney Medical School in 1989.

After graduating Nitschke worked as an intern at Royal Darwin Hospital, and then as an after hours general practitioner.

When the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Medical Association publicly opposed the proposed Northern Territory legislation to provide for legal euthanasia, Nitschke and a small group of dissenting Territory doctors published a contrary opinion in the NT News under the banner Doctors for change.

This put him in a position of an informal spokesperson for the proposed legislation.

After the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI Act) came into force on 1 July 1996, Nitschke assisted four terminally ill people to end their lives using the Deliverance Machine he developed.

In the 1996 Australian federal election Nitschke ran in the seat of the Northern Territory for the Australian Greens but was unsuccessful.

This practice was ceased when the ROTI Act was effectively nullified by the Australian Parliament's Euthanasia Laws Act 1997.

After the ROTI Act was nullified Nitschke began providing advice to others about how they can end their lives, leading to the formation of Exit International in 1997.

A notable case of Nitschke's was that of Nancy Crick, aged 69.

On 22 May 2002, Crick, in the presence of over 20 friends and family (but not Nitschke), took a lethal dose of barbiturates, went quickly to sleep and died within 20 minutes.

Nitschke had encouraged Crick to enter palliative care, which she did for a number of days before returning home again.

She had undergone multiple surgeries to treat bowel cancer and was left with multiple dense and inoperable bowel adhesions that left her in constant pain and frequently in the toilet with diarrhoea.

She was not, however, terminally ill at the time of her death.

Nitschke said the scar tissue from previous cancer surgery had caused her suffering.

"She didn't actually want to die when she had cancer. She wanted to die after she had cancer treatment," he said.

Nitschke made headlines in New Zealand when he announced plans to accompany eight New Zealanders to Mexico where the drug Nembutal, capable of producing a fatal overdose, can be purchased legally.

He also made headlines, even angering some fellow right-to-die advocates, when he presented his plan to launch a "death ship" that would have allowed him to circumvent local laws by euthanising people from around the world in international waters.

In the 2007 Australian federal election Nitschke ran against the Australian politician Kevin Andrews in the Victorian seat of Menzies but was unsuccessful.

In 2009 Nitschke helped to promote Dignified Departure, a 13-hour, pay-television program on doctor-assisted suicide in Hong Kong and mainland China.

The program aired in October in China on the Family Health channel, run by the official China National Radio.

Organisations opposed to euthanasia, as well as some supporting euthanasia, are critical of Nitschke and his methods.

In February 2014 Nitschke was approached after a workshop by Nigel Brayley, 45.

Brayley was facing ongoing questions about the death of his wife, which police were treating as suspected murder.

Two other female friends of his had also died, one of whom is still missing.

Nitschke recounts that Brayley rebuffed suggestions to seek counselling, and had already obtained the drug Nembutal.

Brayley then committed suicide in May 2014.

Although Nitschke was unaware of the investigation at the time, he now believes that Brayley, whom he described as a "serial killer", had made a rational decision to commit suicide rather than face long imprisonment.

Nitschke stated that he does not believe he could have changed Brayley's mind, that Brayley was not his patient, that Brayley was not depressed and did not seek or want Nitschke's advice.

In 2015, Nitschke burned his medical practising certificate in response to what he saw as onerous conditions that violated his right to free speech, imposed on him by the Medical Board of Australia.

Nitschke has been referred to in the media as "Dr Death" or "the Elon Musk of assisted suicide".