SBS Documentary—Do Not Resuscitate

Broadcast Schedule
SBS TV
Part 1: 8:30pm Thursday 23rd November 2006
Part 2: 8:30pm Thursday 30th November 2006

DO NOT RESUSCITATE is a film about the truths people face when they have to deal with their own mortality.
We follow three very different people over 18 months on their quest to determine the right to choose when, and how to die. The result is a profound exploration of how they and their loved ones deal with the stark reality of their pending death and the obstacles they face.

Many terminally ill people want help to die, but in Australia assisting them to commit euthanasia is illegal. As these three people challenge the status quo, the laws governing euthanasia in Australia are put to the test.

The series opens with an emotional plea on talkback radio from a dying man, STEVE GUEST, 58, and the Australian public is confronted with the terrible reality of his suffering. Steve has cancer of the oesophagus and only has weeks to live. A former media advisor and press attaché, Steve is used to controversy.

His call strikes a chord with the Australian public and ignites a media debate about euthanasia. Over the next 2 weeks, Steve allows us to share, in intimate detail, his pain and existential suffering, his thoughts and fears in the days leading up to his death. His appeal through the media for a ‘good death’ is answered and an anonymous supporter agrees – illegally – to provide the drug which gives Steve the means to kill himself.

Following his death from an overdose of barbiturates, the coroner calls for a police investigation. The
people who were close to him in his last days, including his brothers, become suspects in a homicide investigation.

MARY WALSH is an energetic 63-year-old wife, mother, grandmother and selfstyled political activist. Five years ago, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer with a ten percent chance of survival. She endured a gruelling regime of surgery and chemotherapy and is determined to commit suicide if her cancer returns.

Desperate to be in control and despite her family’s concern, Mary embarks on a trip to Mexico to buy the lethal drug Nembutal, which will become her means to this end. Obtaining the drug proves more difficult than
she thought possible and Mary is totally unprepared for her foray into the Mexican underworld. Despite successfully obtaining the illegal drug, Mary is then confronted with the reality. In order to take the drug back to Australia she will have to break the law and smuggle the drug back through customs.

JUDY BAYLISS, 56, a former schoolteacher is in the grip of multiple sclerosis. Diagnosed in her mid twenties she has been living with this debilitating disease nearly all her life. She suffers intensely from her loss of independence as she depends more and more on the help of others for the simplest of tasks. Fifteen
years ago she tried to kill herself. She still wishes she had succeeded.

But Judy resists her decay with mixture of stubborn defiance and pure hope and she contemplates becoming a human guinea pig in the brave new world of stem cell transplants. She travels to China to visit neurosurgeon Dr Huang Hongyun, whose treatment is contentious because it involves the use of cells from aborted foetuses injected into the brain or spinal chord. When her trip to China fails to deliver any real hope for stemming her disease, the choices available to Judy become increasingly unpalatable and she is forced to face the reality of her situation.

On this powerful and emotional journey, we experience in close-up the lives of three characters looking death in the face and the choices they make. Through the media, society’s views are reflected in their suffering and a dialogue erupts between the Australian public, Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, a Catholic bioethicist strongly opposed to euthanasia and Dr Rodney Syme, the president of Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria and a staunch euthanasia campaigner. With our three characters, they discuss their deepest feelings around death and dying, their beliefs and fears.