Rodney Syme

This book presents Dr Syme's views on the plight of people with dementia, and his suggestion for further legislative change. The book's title reflects a life that has been long, and where all that was possible has been achieved - and so is in a sense 'complete'. There follows consideration of the problems that may follow, and what may be a reasonable response.

Medical science now allows us to live longer than ever before. So living with pain and dying well have become major concerns for the general community, health practitioners, church groups and politicians. Should these issues be decided in private by individuals or must we legislate ethical guidelines? Rodney Syme has been an advocate for medically assisted dying for more than twenty years. In Time to Die he reflects on those living and dying in pain and shares their stories. Syme makes a powerful case for extending the right to die to those whose suffering is unbearable.

A Good Death is Rodney Syme's extraordinarily candid and controversial account of the many terminally ill people who he has assisted to end their lives. Over the last 30 years Syme, at first clandestinely and now publicly, has challenged the law on voluntary euthanasia, risking prosecution in doing so. He again risks prosecution for writing this book. ""A Good Death"" is a moving journey with those who came to Rodney Syme for help and a meditation on what it means to confront death in our culture. It is also a doctor's personal story about the moral dilemmas and ethical choices he faces working within the grey areas of the law.In ""A Good Death"" Rodney Syme argues for the end of the unofficial 'conspiracy' of silence within the medical profession and the decriminalisation of voluntary euthanasia in Australia. Through Syme's determination to tell the stories of those who he has assisted to die with dignity, ""A Good Death"" also draws wider lessons of value for those who find themselves in a similar situation.