Choice on support systems advocated

Press, 12 March 1982, Page 5

Choice on support systems advocated

PA Wellington Terminal hospital patients should be allowed to withdraw from life-support systems if they have expressed a prior wish in consultation with their family doctor to do so, according to the president of the Hospital Board’s Association, Mr R. H. Kerr. He said by telephone from Kaiteriteri, where he is on holiday, that he was not in favour of sick people taking individual “suicidal” action. He advocated euthanasia purely on humanitarian, and not financial grounds. “Too many people in our hospitals are given tremendous life support for a few more months and it is no joy to them or to anybody else,” he said. “In a sense, I think a form of euthanasia is already being practised.” Mr Kerr, a retired of Timaru, was elected to a two-year presidential term at the twenty-seventh general conference of the association in February, 1981.

He said that many dedicated and religious people would hold views contrary to his. The situations he envisaged when euthanasia should be practised involved people such as heart patients and accident victims who were kept alive by support systems in intensive-care units. He said that people in geriatric and nursing homes who were dependent on lifesupport systems should also be given the right to elect a quiet and easy death after having consulted their doctor. His views had nothing to do with withholding painkilling drugs from cancer patients. He was against abortion, except in unusual circumstances, and was a communicant member of the Church of England. Mr Kerr has been chairman of the South Canterbury Hospital Board since 1965.