John Graham: It's getting more and more difficult to control pain. I have to focus more and more of my mind on not feeling it, and tolerating levels that are intolerable. You get to a level of pain where it... sometimes it's like... your first belt of scotch... it takes your breath away...
John Graham ran out of morphine 16 hours ago. His body, ravaged by cancer and its consequences, forces John to maintain 12 prescriptions and spend 14 hours on oxygen each day. He's had a zero life expectancy for the last 14 years, and does his best to live each day as if it were his last. Given a death sentence by doctors and a 14 year stay of execution by nature, John has lost almost complete control of his life. As he makes his daily trip via his electric scooter to the corner hotel for lunch, it is clear that what he will never surrender is his dignity and the pride a dying man has in how he lives his last days.

John Graham: You see, I don't think of myself as being an old man, that's the trouble. And of course the other thing I don't do is behave like a terminally ill man. I refuse to feel sorry for myself... it wouldn't do any good. I ignore it and I do the same as everybody else, I handle life the same way as anyone else, day by day. I can have worse days, when I'm, quite honestly too damned ill to go out, so I don't even bother. I can't be bothered doing anything and so I just put on a dressing gown and creep about the house, and then put my meals in the oven and heat them up... sometimes I have a beer, sometimes I don't- it depends on how I am. I seem to lie down a lot.

 John Graham: For four or five hours I'm not hurting because I've taken a load of morphine, but there's no richness of life... there's no quality of life in taking morphine- whereas if I'm playing the piano, I don't need the morphine. I'm not even aware that I've got a body, because I'm not in it... I'm out there somewhere between the tips of my fingers and the music which is soaring around in the air, which is why when I'm playing the piano, I'll either watch my fingers... I'm not watching which note I'm hitting, I'm just watching my hands move across the keys, looking at the air, or gazing at nothing at all and... for me that's important.
Looks can be deceiving. This is John Graham on a good day. It takes 22 hours of resting and recovering for every 2 hours of pleasure John gets from acting like a healthy human being. At times, he feels immortal, having long outlived his prognosis and, he would add, surviving the poking and prodding of doctors for the last 15 years trying to figure out why he isn't dead. He agonizes over the notion that his final days alive will be spent sedated on high doses of drugs with machines controlling his bodily functions. John Graham has only one wish these days, to die before he gets to that point.

John Graham: Cough! Cough! Definitely in trouble.

Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 14 years ago, John had his spleen, a kidney and 80% of his pancreas removed. He has a weak heart, 1/4 of which doesn't function, a permanently collapsed lung and diabetes. On these bad days, John does little more than stay in his Adelaide home in South Australia spending time doing little more than catching his breath. Hospitals won't take him because he can't be cured. Hospice care turned him away because of the "indeterminable nature" of his terminal illness; he could live another week or another year. John concedes his life is becoming less and less bearable.

John requires more time each day resting in bed and on oxygen. His pain attacks are becoming increasingly more frequent and more potent. Like many in Australia and the United States, John wants assurances that when he is ready, he can die quietly, peacefully, and with dignity. And hopefully...with a little help.

3000 miles away, in Darwin, the capital of the northern territory on Australia's tropical north coast, there is help for John.

Marshall Perron: It's probably the ultimate freedom, at the end of your days, the freedom to take your own life. I find it hard to conceive how anyone could genuinely believe that you shouldn't have that right.
This is Marshall Perron, former Chief Minister of the Parliament of the Northern Territory. A revolutionary some would say because, as Chief Minister of the Parliament in Darwin, he is the first in the world to craft and enact a voluntary euthanasia law.

"The rights of the terminally ill act," to Perron, is nothing more than righting a wrong. 78% of Australians support voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill. Perron argues that euthanasia is commonly practiced now without a law, but it's not fairly accessible and in some cases not even asked for.

Marshall Perron: I don't think there is any doubt that euthanasia is happening around the country every day without any safeguards at all. We have a survey that shows 28% of doctors have, on request, assisted a suicide in the past and a significant number of them have done it more than once. It's time to stop pretending it doesn't happen at all and acknowledge it and start to control it.
Perron's law is quite strict and in so doing, makes it inconceivable for someone who is either not terminal or unsure of their desire to hasten death, to use it. 3 doctors, a general practitioner, a psychiatrist and a specialist in the patient's illness, must verify that the illness is terminal, that all prescribed treatments have been explored, that the patient is suffering great pain and that he or she is not clinically depressed. After a nine day waiting period, the patient and his or her doctor may proceed.

Marshall Perron: We have stopped pretending it doesn't happen. We may have made it harder, but we have also made it safer and fairer. The biggest problem our opponents have had is that their prediction of a slippery slope to calamity could not be proven. The opponents are adamant that it is impossible to draft legislation that would be safe. How would we know? We've never tried.

How many times have I read that you can't pass voluntary euthanasia without it eventually leading to involuntary euthanasia? We're about to see if they're right. How a competent adult who doesn't want help to die is going to actually fulfill all the requirements and reluctantly be ushered through two doctors and a psychiatrist etc. by unscrupulous family members, is quite beyond me.

Dr. Chris Wake: The northern territory law is a law passed for the world. If you come here, they'll kill you.

Dr. Chris Wake is the president of the northern territory chapter of the Australian Medical Association and has single-handedly been fighting the rights of the terminally ill act in court and in the media, since it passed the parliamentary vote last year. Wake argues that what Marshall Perron and others call euthanasia, is actually murder, and that what he does is practice good medicine.

Dr. Chris Wake: We must look closely when the government passes a law that kills people. The public has no ability to differentiate between euthanasia and withdrawing medicine. I guarantee my patients that they will not be in pain. In the process, I may shorten one of their lives. The AMA and the church are comfortable with that. It takes skill and knowledge of legalities but it is not murder. What this law does to the medical profession, what it does to social and moral values, outweighs the legal imposition of the law.
Or does it? And who dictates that? Many argue that personal liberties far outweigh the agenda of one particular institution. Chris Wake believes differently.

Dr. Chris Wake: It changes the whole foundation of the medical profession.
Not everyone in the Australian Medical Association thinks change is a bad thing.

Nitschke: You know how Copernicus feels now don't you? You know how Gallileo feels now don't you? it's the same thing. You're breaking new ground.

Philip Nitschke is breaking new ground, fighting hard for the rights of the terminally ill act. As an outspoken socially progressive doctor who runs an after hours medical service for lower income and drug users, he saw the darker side of the Australian medical establishment when this issue was first being debated.

Nitschke: When Marshall Perron introduced the law, the AMA said that no doctor in the territory would comply. That irked me. So I got a group together to counter that. The AMA was attempting to undermine popular public policy.

Nitschke: In my practice I see nothing but socially disadvantaged patients. To hear the opponents argue, the weak and socially disadvantaged are at risk. What we have now is a club. Euthanasia has always been there for the privileged. What I always liked about Perron's law was that it was there for everyone. The AMA is more interested in protecting doctors than patients. The government and the doctors should be listening to the population. The doctors are saying this is not for you, I don't care what you say.
Philip Nitschke is listening. Since publicly announcing his willingness to carry out provisions of the law, he has consulted with over 50 terminally ill people and receives dozens of calls each day from all over Australia and the world from people inquiring about the law. He has developed an acute insight into the mindset of the terminally ill.

Nitschke: They don't make very good patients. Good patients are compliant and take everything handed to them. These patients don't. They are an interesting group who have always been in control of their lives. They don't give up easily and haven't had much luck with the medical profession.

John Graham: The biggest mistake I've made in my life, and I haven't made too many big mistakes, was believing a man I respected and liked, a very intelligent man... this man is a professor and chief surgeon in the most expensive hospital in the southern hemisphere... when he said to me seriously, John I've known you for a few years and you've never been careful in your life so I know you won't take too much notice, but if you're very careful you might last another year. Before the 20% of your pancreas, which is still eating itself, or the one kidney you've got and it's not too healthy, your liver is not so good, three quarters of your heart is doing the job of a full time one; so a year would be, if you're careful, the most you're going to get. If you're lucky, it'll be quick and your heart goes. The last two or three months could be very very bad. So be careful, and good luck. And I believed him.


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