Euthanasia Advocate Dies After Long Struggle With Illness

Queensland, Nov. 1 2007.

A euthanasia campaigner who once compared her plight to that of a sick dog has taken her own life, ending her battle with bladder cancer and multiple sclerosis.

Queensland mother of four June Burns, 67, was finally at peace, her husband Bob said today.

She died at the weekend at her home at Warwick, west of Brisbane, after using a quantity of the lethal drug Nembutal, which had kept since the late 1990s, fellow euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke said.

A Queensland police spokesman said today the matter was under investigation and a report would be submitted to the coroner.

Mr Burns said his wife, who saw her own father die of cancer, had been comforted during her long illness by the fact she had an out.

"June maintained a strong belief that the individual should be able to make his or her own decision about ending life peacefully in circumstances where a terminal illness leads to a painful and undignified death, despite any amount of palliative care which may be available," Mr Burns said in a statement.

He said his wife had "fought on courageously knowing that when the end was in sight she could make her own decision and end her life peacefully and with dignity".

Mrs Burns grabbed national headlines in 1999 when she appeared in a TV advertisement comparing her plight to that of a sick dog and vowing she would one day take her life.

"Soon I will be in such pain and distress that my life won't be worth living," she said in the ad.

"If I was a dog, by now the RSPCA would be on to my husband for cruelty and would have me put down straight away.

"I don't want to have to kill myself, but if nobody can help me, I'm going to have to."

The advertisement was widely condemned and critics later used the example of Mrs Burns, who went into remission and continued to live, to show circumstances could change and that patients could change their minds.

But Dr Nitschke, a family friend who legally helped four patients die under short-lived legislation in the Northern Territory, said Mrs Burns had been misunderstood and he hoped her last act would show she had always been genuine.

"I think that message was lost in the ad that she was simply a person who wanted the choice and when the time was right she would take it," he said.

"My one hope there is that it will put an end to this idea that she was the woman who changed her mind and then she'll be recognised as the courageous pioneer that she was."

Right-to-die legislation passed by the Northern Territory legislature in 1995 was overturned a year later by overriding federal legislation.

AAP in the
Sydney Morning Herald