GP affair scandal offers a stark warning about the dangers of the End of Life Choice Act

Yesterday Radio NZ published an article about an incident involving a New Zealand GP who is facing disciplinary action for having an affair with the husband of one of her patients.

The GP transferred the husband’s care to another GP at the same medical centre, but continued to treat his wife and children during the affair.

What has this got to do with the End of Life Choice Act?

Well, just imagine if this exact same scenario had played out in a New Zealand where assisted suicide and euthanasia were legal, and with two simple differences in the events that unfolded:

Firstly; the wife had never discovered that her husband was having an affair with her GP, and, secondly; the wife had been diagnosed with a terminal illness that made her eligible for assisted suicide and euthanasia.

In such a scenario you now have a patient being treated by a GP who is not only engaged in a serious act of dishonesty involving the patient’s family, but one who also stands to benefit from the premature death of the patient.

Her death would not only allow the GP to maintain the secrecy of the affair and avoid punishment for her professional misconduct, but it would also offer her the opportunity to begin an exclusive and public relationship with the husband.

The death of the patient would also be an advantage to the husband if he was more interested in being in a relationship with the GP than with his wife, or had serious reasons to fear being exposed for having an affair.

The End of Life Choice Act has the very real potential to turn a case of infidelity and medical misconduct like this into a situation where a vulnerable woman is pressured into taking her own life by her doctor and her husband.

How could such an horrific situation actually play out under the End of Life Choice Act though?

Well, once the wife is diagnosed, her husband could begin to exert subtle but very powerful ongoing coercion on his wife with regular comments and conversations intended to manipulate her into ‘choosing’ euthanasia.

In her more vulnerable moments of anxiety and fear she would become even more susceptible to this sort of pressure from her most trusted companion in life.

In her regular visits with her GP, similar sorts of conversational pressures could also be applied by the doctor. This time, however, they would have the added impact of coming from a trusted medical professional who wields major power and influence over a vulnerable patient regarding healthcare decision making.

As the wife in the Radio NZ incident told the journalist: "We have to have faith in our practitioners - this is a GP with whom I've shared my most personal medical information.”

Not only could all of this pressure easily happen without detection under the End of Life Choice Act, but the Act would also allow the euthanasia to happen very quickly, within just a few days of the wife requesting it in fact.

There are two doctors involved in the process, but only the first one is required to try and detect pressure under the End of Life Choice Act. That doctor simply has to ‘do their best’ (whatever that means) to detect pressure, and they can only speak to other people that the patient will let them speak to about this.

In this scenario, that would mean that the only person responsible for ensuring that the patient is not being pressured into euthanasia is also having an affair with the patient’s husband. To add insult to injury, the husband may then be the only other person that the patient advises the doctor to speak to about this risk factor.

To make matters worse, even if the wife changed her mind after the lethal dose was approved, the husband and the GP could still conspire to forcibly euthanise the wife without being caught.

This would simply be a matter of them administering the lethal dose at home while she is sleeping, or lying to her about what she is taking, or maybe using other sedatives before administering the lethal dose and then lying about the circumstances of the killing.

The reason they would be able to easily get away with this is because the End of Life Choice Act does not require any independent witnesses to be present at any point in the process - not even when the patient’s life is ended.

To suggest that something like this could never happen would require us to deny the reality of the weaknesses of human nature - especially when sexual infidelity, shame, and the fear of being exposed is involved.

There is nothing in the End of Life Choice Act that would prevent just such a scenario - the premeditated killing of a vulnerable patient under the guise of euthanasia - from happening, and then going completely undetected by anyone.

This awful incident should serve as a stark warning about just how dangerous the End of Life Choice Act really is, and why voting ‘No’ is the only way to protect vulnerable New Zealanders from its deadly harms.