A coroner is calling for changes to assisted suicide laws in Queensland, Australia, after an elderly man was able to kill himself using his wife’s assisted suicide pills.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the man’s wife was declared eligible for assisted suicide in March of 2023; medication was delivered to the couple’s home a month later. However, the couple went to the hospital, where the man’s wife was euthanized using an intravenous drug instead. The man was supposed to return the assisted suicide pills delivered to their home, but never did. Instead, he took them on his own and died on May 16, 2023, just days after his wife’s death.
Coroner David O’Connell said the man, identified only as ABC, was permitted to be the contact person for his wife’s assisted suicide pills despite a history of depression. He also noted that fewer identity checks are required to become a contact person for assisted suicide than to enter a nightclub in Brisbane.
READ: Disabled women are more at risk for assisted suicide than men in Canada. Here’s why.
Though O’Connell didn’t argue against assisted suicide’s legality, he believes more safeguards should be in place — including the presence of a health care professional anytime someone undergoes assisted suicide, rather than just delivering the fatal pills to someone’s home.
“The parliament passed oral substance administration laws which, in my respectful observation, did not have the appropriate balance struck between patient autonomy and lethal medication safety,” he said, adding, “This highly dangerous drug can then, practical terms, simply be left on the kitchen table of a patient’s residence.”
Similar issues have been found in other countries and municipalities; it was discovered after an investigation from the Australian Care Alliance that of the 400 prescriptions for lethal drugs that were written in Washington state in the U.S., only 291 deaths were recorded. What happened to the remaining deadly drugs is not known, as the drugs are not tracked after being dispensed.
“Washington continues its experiment with prescribing various cocktails of lethal drugs to be taken, often with no witness present, leaving people at risk of distressing complications and at risk of being killed by a family member or someone else interested in their early death,” the Australian Care Alliance noted at the time, concluding, “It is not a safe model for any other jurisdiction to follow.”
Queensland became the fifth state in Australia to legalize assisted suicide in 2021. In just the first six months of legalization, over 200 people were killed, resulting in a death rate higher than that of Western Australia after one year, and twice that of Victoria after four years.
