Australian "exits life with dignity" - euthanasia advocates

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian quadriplegic man who died on Monday after winning the legal right to refuse food and water had provided a means for people to end their life with dignity, said his lawyer and voluntary euthanasia advocates.

Voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide is illegal in Australia and Britain, but Britain will this week clarify when a person will and will not be prosecuted for assisting suicide.

In 1996, Australia's outback Northern Territory introduced the world's first voluntary euthanasia laws. Four people used the laws to die by injection administered via a computer before the national government overturned the legislation in 1997.

There are no moves in Australia to re-introduce voluntary euthanasia laws.

Christian Rossiter, 49, died in a Perth nursing home on Monday after succumbing to a chest infection, five weeks after a court granted him the right to refuse food and water, his brother Tim Rossiter said in a statement.

Rossiter, a spastic quadriplegic who described his life as "a living hell", did not have a terminal illness.

"Christian Rossiter set a means where people could exit life with dignity, and that is something that he was very keen to do," his lawyer John Hammond told local media.

"People will start saying more often to doctors and nursing staff, 'I now want to leave this world'," Hammond said.

"It's only when you're in a position like Christian that you can understand how terrible it is to meet each day, that life no longer has any value, when you're in the pain that he was."

Hammond said Rossiter's case was not about euthanasia, but about giving people the right to refuse treatment if they are dying.

Australia's most high profile pro-euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke, who helped those in the Northern Territory die, said Rossiter's case had set a precedent on the rights of a patient and the legal rights and responsibilities of carers.

"People who want to end their life by refusing treatment, by refusing fluids, refusing food, starving yourself to death, you have that option, the courts have made that clear," Nitschke from pro-euthanasia group Exit International told local radio.

"No one can come along and wake you from unconsciousness and give you food and fluids against your wishes," he said.

"It’s an important decision in terms of clarifying the exact rights a person has and also the responsibility and rights of the nursing home providing care."

Assisted suicide is illegal in the UK, with the 1961 Suicide Act making it an offence to "aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another." Helping somebody to die carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

However, since 1992, about 100 British citizens have ended their lives in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, without their relatives being prosecuted.

In July, Britain's highest court ruled that the government must clarify the law on assisted suicide after ruling in favour of a woman who wanted reassurances her husband would not be prosecuted if she went abroad to end her life.

Britain's director of public prosecutions will on Wednesday issue guidelines, which would only apply in England and Wales, to make it clear when legal action would, or would not, be taken.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)