Packed hall for Illich and death

Press, 14 August 1978, Page 6

Packed hall for Illich and death

by

MICHALL LYNCE

The Horticultural Hall is h .• t to hold 700: on Friday eve:-. :g many more than that ere there to hear Dr Ivan 1 :.b — intellectual peri-pa:-.'..c. •.•.chnolc-gif. anarchK. da;’.mg of the avant ; ind : g® F institmions — be th-y meirmne, e.. . at. :.. reh.gn-n. or whatDr I'lich v. as urbane, and go e was 'he audir.ue — blue-stockinged ’ •mer.. d'-it'cs. social workers and the ’ike — al! very <. lean and all ver. eager to l.sten. I hat t is Iris tst ting engage..r. • in New Zealand — 31 in 21 davs. including ah med:'....i faculties. after being invted t-- de b. er the annual Sir D- .glas !<"bb ’ectures a' Au kland I no.ersity. As in ot'r-r and

■in deference to his hosts in Christchurch, epidemiologists, s his theme was a continuation . of the attack on the allegedly t overbearing role of the medics’ profession, documented in ‘ his book "Medical Nemisis.” Particularly. he dealt - with death — in. as he said, t a death-obsessed country, - where hospitals were . . . . “high-rise death cathedrals - right in the middle of the towns, well away from the i families, but within comfort- - able travelling distance of the 1 doctors.” - Doctors bore te brunt of the *. attack, and lllich. looking like > the shaman of the millenium. used his longer-than-long s> ■'ngers and stviishly skeletal J frame to keep the audience 2 right on his side. r His plea is for “natural e death." away from hospitals. - where an increasing amount . w as soent for an increasingly

Health expenditure had, been taken to its limit, and: •now the returns were: diminishing. i “The life expectancy in adult New Zealand males is; I lower than in previous gen-1 1 erations and indeed lower: 'than in many undeveloped; I countries, and declining.” he said. Hospital death, as it had (now evolved, was a regiI mentation. and a final blow 'to digmty: doctors assumed control, and at the! ''same time removed the patient's psychological ability. Ito control himself. Dr Hlich’s solution brooks no gradual change: Reduce •hosoitai based medicine by: at ieast 90 per cent; reduc-i ti--n bv any figure much less' will merely reduce access to: a still highly desirable ser-‘ Death among the familv is death with dignity, he says. 1

iAll that is needed is freedom of access to the needs of dying — access to a few necessary drugs. "Death, the end of my 'world, and apocalypse, the end of the world, are intimately related; our attitude (towards both has clearlv been deeply affected by the atomic situation. The apocalypse has ceased to be just a mythological conjecture and has become a real contingency. Armageddon has become a possible conseunence of man’s direct decision." In summary, for me Dr lllich was an enigma: His books are extraordinarv — tremendously tightly edited tirades against the technological treadmill that have few detractors, even among their specialist targets. Yet the person did not quire match the preconception, and the message not quite the printed word. His

: talk was little more than one chapter of his “Medical Nemesis.” He made no secret of this — asking the audience beforehand how many had read the book. (About 60 had.) The other qualm was the certain slickness about the lecture, but I suppose Dr lllich has given it many times before. . It was a slickness seemingly lapped up by the audience in the uncanny ranoort that the man built up. The result was a rather devastating put-down of certain questioners. However. lllich the man is. and has been seen to be. a very unusual person — a wide-ranging visionary, with impeccable academic qualifications — and I will now take another deep breath and back to his hooks; they are -not easy reading.