UK: Nitschke plans lethal drug testing kit launch in UK: report
29 Mar 2009 11:38 PM
LONDON, March 29 AAP - Australian pro-euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke plans to launch testing kits for people to check the strength of drugs they have bought to commit suicide in the UK this year, a British newspaper has reported.
Quoting Deliverance, the newsletter of Dr Nitschke's organisation, Exit International, The Observer said the kits, which have chemicals that change colour when mixed with lethal barbiturates, would be released in May.
The launch coincided with Dr Nitschke's planned tour of Britain, and the kits would be available for about STG35 ($A72).
"We decided to launch in the UK because of its enlightened attitude; many of the things we can do in the UK are banned in Australia," the paper quoted Nitschke as saying.
But pro- and anti-euthanasia groups condemned his actions.
Dignity in Dying, which calls for terminally ill adults to have the option of an assisted death within strict legal safeguards, branded the plan as "irresponsible and potentially dangerous".
"They have no real control over who accesses the information they provide or uses these kits, and so vulnerable people may be put at risk," chief executive Sarah Wootton told the Dignity in Dying website.
Anti-euthanasia group Care Not Killing Alliance spokesman Peter Saunders told The Observer: "His plan is pushing the outermost boundaries of the law and will exploit and endanger vulnerable British people."
Dr Nitschke's "Deliverance Machine", used to dispense fatal doses of euthanasia drugs in the 1990s, is on display in the British Science Museum.
