Dr. Philip Haig Nitschke:

Yes, there has been a significant shift. In fact, as I said, there were very few doctors. It was almost impossible to find the required four doctors to support a person’s request for help to die. I spent months with the first person who used that law simply trying to find another doctor to agree. That has changed, but I might add here that it has changed really grudgingly on the part of the organisations, such as the Australian Medical Association. It seems to me that it changed when the medical profession saw that it was in control of the process. Now, there is a situation where the person who has the keys to gate or who makes the decision is not the patient. The person who makes the decision is the doctor. That is true in the Netherlands, where I am now based. It is true wherever you bring in these laws. Yet, it is not true in Switzerland. When you gave that control to the doctors, the medical profession was a lot happier because they were running the show.

That is what I worry about regarding this medicalisation of death and dying where you take away the control of the individual and hand it to some other body, such as a panel of doctors, who will adjudicate as to whether your suffering is good enough for them to agree that you would be better off dead.