Perigo launches voluntary euthanasia book

As I was playing losing tennis yesterday out at Patumahoe, libertarian Lindsay Perigo was in Grey Lynn launching what is hoped to be a winning campaign by Dr Philip Nitschke to help people who through age or illness are no longer able to live without pain, and who are unable even to help themselves to end their lives with dignity.

Dr Nitschke's new project is a new book, The Peaceful Pill, and it was launched yesterday in NZ at a meeting in Grey Lynn that included a workshop on techniques of voluntary euthanasia. NZ customs added to the launch by going over Nitschke and fellow campaigner Dr Fiona Stewart on their way into the country on Friday.

Here's a link to the raw audio of the launch, which features a controversial speech by Lindsay, recounting the chief adversaries of the view that your life is your own. Religious bigots feature highly. In a delicious example of the uselessness of the traditional political spectrum, he is introduced by Jack Jones, an old Marxist adversary of Perigo's but with a similar passion for free speech.

As Perigo says in the speech, grab the book while you can, because governments both here and in Australia are already making moves both here and in there to have it banned. Irony of ironies. Not only do the religious bigots ban you taking your own life, or having help to do so, they also want the political bigots to ban you reading about being able to take your own life.

Listen to the launch while you can.

[NB: If there are any volunteers to transcribe Lindsay's speech for the next issue of 'The Free Radical,' I'd be enormously grateful. Email me at organon at ihug.co.nz .]

LINKS: Nitschke launches 'death' book in NZ - The Age
Speeches to launch the 'Peaceful Pill' handbook - Lindsay Perigo et al [5.5MB mp3]

RELATED: Health, Libertarianism, Religion, Free Speech