Euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke has had his medical registration suspended after the medical board found he posed “a serious risk” to the health and safety of the public.
The South Australian Board of the Medical Board of Australia said it made the decision, which will apply nationally, to “keep the public safe”.
The interim suspension, an “immediate action” separate to other inquiries the regulator is conducting into the man dubbed “Doctor Death”, was triggered by an ABC television story in July alleging that Nitschke had counselled an apparently depressed but otherwise healthy Perth man, Nigel Brayley, to take his own life.
Brayley, 45, died in May after taking a euthanasia drug he illegally imported from China.
Nitschke told Guardian Australia the decision was "very disappointing" and based on "different positions of ideology".
“It’s a political suspension. They're saying my views are incompatible with the views of a medical professional, that the view that the person has a right to suicide is incompatible with being a medical professional, and that seems to me to be quite bizarre.”
Nitschke said his lawyers had identified “many aspects of the suspension that need to be argued” and he would appeal.
“It will make no difference to what I do,” he said. “In fact what's happened in the last two weeks is that we've had an unprecedented number of people sign up to attend our workshops, where they can learn to peacefully, reliable end their lives.”
“It means I'll be running more workshops, not less,” he said.
In a press conference in Adelaide, Nitschke said: "The board’s decision seems in keeping with the Liberal government’s long-standing policy of censorship of information on death and dying,” he said.
Nitschke said that interest in the case had led sales of his euthanasia handbook to “reach an all-time high”.
In his defence to the board, Nitschke argued he only had fleeting contact with Brayley, meeting him at euthanasia workshop in Perth in February, and at rally in March for Nitschke’s Voluntary Euthanasia Party before the WA senate election re-run.
He also says Brayley had procured the euthanasia drug on 17 February, before he ever made contact with Nitschke or his organisation, Exit International.
“His plans were in place, and my contact with him was superficial,” Nitschke said. “He was never my patient, he never received counselling from me to do anything, and certainly not to suicide.
“To argue a 'duty of care' to Nigel would be to argue that all of the thousands of people attending workshops, and who I talk to about non-medical issues are in fact patients of mine,” Nitschke said.
The two also exchanged emails in the lead up to Brayley’s suicide, in which the 45-year-old Perth man admitted, “I don't honestly fit neatly under Exit’s charter of supporting a terminal medical illness”, but said he was “suffering and have been now for some nine months now”.
“I have sought medical and other forms of assistance but they are unable to help. All recognise and accept that my life will never be the same and that its only going to get worse and I am not prepared to risk my families financial security and happiness by continuing along this same path,” Brayley wrote to Nitschke.
However, Nitschke says the Perth man did not appear to be clinically depressed, and was instead under great stress because he believed the police were investigating him over the death of his ex-wife three years ago.
Lina Brayley died in February 2011 after falling from the top of Perth’s Statham’s Quarry, in what police suspect was a homicide.
Nitschke said Brayley was “a meticulous, ordered, killer who had planned his end in every detail”, who felt the “police net closing in [and] took perhaps the sensible step of ending his life”.
He has lodged a complaint with the ABC and intends to complain to the Australian Communications Media Authority over the ABC’s report on Brayley, which he said was “biased and subjective”.
A drink at midnight to mark the end of 25 years a doctor. Now to appeal this politically motivated de-registration pic.twitter.com/KNwcJiMbwq
— Philip Nitschke (@philipnitschke) July 23, 2014
A spokeswoman for the Medical Board of Australia said the suspension would remain in place until the conclusion of other investigations into the controversial euthanasia advocate, after which the board could recommend a tribunal hearing to formally strip Nitschke of his registration.
It is believed there are three separate inquiries into the controversial doctor underway, the most recent arising from February this year when Nitschke gave an address on euthanasia to medical staff at a Perth hospital.
A long-time euthanasia campaigner, Nitschke helped a 66-year-old prostate cancer sufferer, Robert Dent, to become the first person in the world to end his life under a legal euthanasia regime in 1996.
Dent took advantage of a brief window beginning in which euthanasia was permitted in the Northern Territory from July until December 1996. The NT law was overridden by a federal law banning assisted suicide introduced by federal MP Kevin Andrews.
Rodney Syme, a Victorian doctor and advocate for legal euthanasia under strict conditions, said Nitschke was a “maverick” in the movement but that he was “surprised” by the board’s decision.
“[Nitschke] never sat down with Mr Brayley and interrogated him. He’s not, in my view, had a medical consultation with him and therefore I wonder if this is actually a matter on which the board can legitimately make a determination”.
However he said doctors were ethically bound to try to dissuade a suicidal person from taking their life, and to report the matter to authorities, and Nitschke’s failure to do so may have triggered the suspension.
Syme said the confusion around Nitschke’s obligations to Brayley showed the need for law reform in the area. “The events that Dr Nitschke has been involved in are practices which would not occur if there were proper legislation surrounding advice and assistance at the end of your life,” he said.
The Liberal senator, Cory Bernardi, said he congratulated the board on its decision.
The South Australian senator said it was "appalling" that Nitschke had been able to open a "death clinic consultancy" in the state. "It is about time that Philip Nitschke’s actions were scrutinised for any breaches of the law," he said.