Better Off Dead

According to Canadian anti-euthanasia campaigner Alex Schadenberg, Melbourne doctor Rodney Syme is a threat to society: a ‘cowboy’ and ‘the worst of the worst’. Why? Because for over a decade now, Syme has been publicly assisting terminally and chronically ill patients to die – despite the threat of jail for doing so. How did a respectable 80-year-old urologist come to be a law-breaking cowboy? Melbourne urologist Rodney Syme — Photo: supplied 'I thought: what is ethical about me being able to end my own suffering but my patients have to go on?' Rodney Syme Sandra Morris and Albert Leonzini, both featured in this episode — Photo: Emily Sexton It began 40 years ago, with a patient of his who was dying of kidney cancer. Her name was Betty. Syme could hear her screams from the foyer of the hospital. He didn’t know how to help her – but his conscience was pricked. Syme knew that, as a doctor, if he were in the same kind of pain, he could find drugs – or help from other doctors – that would mean he didn’