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TL;DR: Brain death determination has serious flaws. Only 25% of doctors follow proper testing protocols,[13] 39% of brain-dead patients show movements during testing,[17] and at least 175 documented cases show long-term survival after brain death declaration.[20] The “independent” doctors verifying brain death work for the same hospitals profiting from organ procurement. Families need documented proof of their wishes because updating donor status online often doesn’t work.

Core Facts About Brain Death Determination

• Brain death was defined in 1968, months after the first heart transplant raised ethical questions[6]
• 90% of organ donors receive drugs that suppress movement and consciousness during brain death testing[8]
• No national registry tracks brain death misdiagnoses, making errors “dismissible anecdotes”
• Organ procurement is a $1 billion annual operation in the US, with individual OPOs averaging $2.3 million yearly profit[5]
• Online donor status changes often don’t update DMV records, which hospitals use as authoritative proof

Why This Investigation Started

Something bothered me for months. Victoria’s euthanasia laws made me connect two facts I’d never linked before.

Politicians wanted to force doctors to tell dying patients about assisted death options. At the same time, organ donations from euthanasia patients were climbing fast.

In Europe and Canada, 286 euthanasia patients donated organs by 2021, saving 837 lives.[1]

Spain’s numbers tell the story: 7 cases in 2021. Then 42 cases in 2022. That’s sixfold growth in one year.[2]

By 2024, worldwide euthanasia procedures hit 30,000 annually.[3]

Organ donation makes serious money. A heart transplant costs $190,000 US.[4] Organ procurement organisations average $2.3 million in profits each year.[5]

I hadn’t connected these dots. Then I found a Facebook group called The Right To Fight.

What I found there changed everything I thought I knew about organ donation.

What Families Report About Brain Death Pressure

Thousands of families share the same story in The Right To Fight Facebook group.

Someone has a traumatic brain injury. Doctors declare them brain dead within one or two days. Then comes immediate pressure for organ donation.

Here’s what struck me about these reports.

Every doctor says injuries need rest to heal. But these patients don’t get rest.

They’re alive. They need fluids. They need feeding tubes. They need breathing machines while their bodies recover from massive trauma.

Instead, doctors rush to declare brain death. Then they push for organ donation.

The stories include many people declared brain dead who later recovered. They needed proper medical treatment. The kind patients received before 1968, when brain death was invented.

Bottom line: Families report systematic rushing of brain death declarations, often within 24-48 hours of injury, before adequate recovery time.

When Was Brain Death Invented?

Brain death wasn’t always part of medicine.

August 1968: Harvard Medical School published “A Definition of Irreversible Coma.”[6]

The timing matters.

December 1967: Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant.[7]

This raised an uncomfortable question. Were donors dead when hearts were removed? Or did removing the heart kill them?

Within months, Harvard redefined death itself.

The medical establishment says organ transplantation “developed in parallel” with brain death definitions. They claim transplants weren’t the driving force.

But look at the timeline. The ethical problem emerged. Then the solution appeared. Precisely when the transplant industry needed it.

Key insight: Brain death was defined in 1968, months after the first heart transplant created an urgent need to redefine when donors are “dead enough” for organ removal.

Why Do Dead People Need Pain Medication?

Here’s what grabbed my attention:

• 90% of organ donors receive neuromuscular blockers
• 63.3% receive inhaled anaesthetics
• 33.9% receive opioids, with fentanyl most common[8]

Stop and think about this.

Why do dead people need drugs that suppress movement, pain responses, and autonomic reactions?

The official explanation: these drugs keep organs working well.

That explanation doesn’t work. If someone’s truly brain dead, why fentanyl for pain? If they need Nimbex to stop body movement, what’s trying to move?

The Protocol Nobody Follows

According to testing protocols, doctors must wait after administering these drugs. The drugs need to wear off before conducting brain death tests.

But who checks compliance?

Families don’t know the protocols. No third-party organisation monitors the process. No one without profit motive watches to ensure proper procedures.

What stops organ procurement teams from testing whilst patients remain under the influence of Nimbex, Propofol, and Fentanyl?

Nothing.

The problem: The same drugs that mimic brain death symptoms are administered before brain death testing, with no independent oversight to ensure proper wait times.

What Does “Independent Doctor” Actually Mean?

Brain death requires two independent doctors. Sounds safe, right?

Ask yourself: independent from what, exactly?

You’d assume “independent” means separate from organisations profiting from organ procurement.

That’s not what it means.

The Legal Definition of Independent

Australia’s requirement: “two doctors, neither of whom is caring for a potential organ recipient.”[9]

United States requirement: doctors performing brain death examinations shouldn’t be “part of the transplant team.”[10]

Notice what’s missing?

Neither says doctors must be independent from the hospital profiting from organ procurement.

Here’s what “independent” actually means in practice: two doctors who don’t work in the same department of the same hospital. That’s it. They could be from different departments—neurology and intensive care, for instance—but both employed by the institution that’s about to generate significant revenue from the organs.

Deceased donor organ procurement is a $1 billion per year operation in the United States alone. Profits average $2.3 million per organ procurement organisation per year. Total assets per OPO: $45 million, growing at 9% annually.[5]

In 2016, Medicare reimbursed certified transplant centres $1.6 billion.[11] They charge around $190,000 US for a heart transplant.[4]

Now, you might say these are non-profit organisations. But here’s the thing: the organisation itself doesn’t care if it has money. The individuals in the organisation do.

All these doctors doing the transplants, everyone involved in organ procurement, the administrators overseeing the process—they’re taking home substantial salaries from this billion-dollar operation. When the organisation profits, they profit.

It’s a lie to pretend there’s no financial interest just because you’ve structured something as non-profit.

So when two “independent” doctors declare brain death, both are employed by the same institution that will generate revenue from the organ procurement. Both work for colleagues who benefit financially from successful organ harvesting. Both operate within a system where hospitals are judged partly on their organ donation rates.

Now ask yourself: how long would they keep their jobs if they put the spanner in the works of too many organ donation opportunities?

If a doctor consistently disagrees with brain death declarations, consistently finds reasons why patients don’t meet the criteria, consistently slows down the procurement process—do you honestly think they’ll remain employed?

Their job is essentially to be a doctor from a different department who agrees with the organ donation process. Someone who can be pointed to and called “independent” because they don’t work in the same unit as the first doctor.

But they’re not independent from anything a normal person would consider them independent from. They’re not independent from the profit motive. They’re not independent from institutional pressure. They’re not independent from colleagues whose income depends on successful organ procurement.

The only reason anyone believes they’re independent is because nobody’s ever asked the obvious question: independent from what?

It’s the same pattern you see with euthanasia safeguards. Two different doctors have to sign off—but they’re both employed by the same system, working within the same institutional pressures, subject to the same financial incentives.

The safeguards aren’t designed to protect patients. They’re designed to provide legal cover whilst maintaining plausible deniability.

The Data That Doesn’t Exist

Here’s the thing that really exposes the system: nobody’s keeping count of brain death misdiagnoses.

In the United States, a substantial proportion of patients declared dead by neurological criteria don’t meet the legal standard for death. Researchers examining brain death patients with normal renal function found that 77% exhibited central diabetes insipidus, meaning 23% retained normal hypothalamic osmoregulatory function—evidence of ongoing brain activity.[12]

Yet there’s no national registry tracking these contradictions.

When something happens a million times but nobody’s putting it into a spreadsheet, you’ve still only got a million anecdotes. Because nobody’s counting, it can’t become a statistic.

And why is that the case? Because if someone’s counting, then it becomes evidence. If nobody’s counting, then even documented cases remain dismissible stories.

The Safeguards That Aren’t

Despite the vast majority of doctors reporting competency in performing brain death testing, only 25% conduct testing in accordance with current practice guidelines.[13]

Ten percent of providers don’t perform an apnea test—the omission of which constitutes an incomplete and incorrect performance of brain death examination.[13]

Even more damning: of providers who obtained ancillary tests on an as-needed basis, more than a quarter ordered them if the patient breathed during apnea testing—a finding inconsistent with brain death. This suggests misdiagnosis may be more common than previously assumed.[13]

The Lazarus Effect They Don’t Want You to See

Here’s something that sounds like it should be front-page news but somehow never makes it into public discussion: the Lazarus effect.

Imagine you’re lying on the organ donation table. You’ve been declared brain dead. They’re about to remove your organs. Then you lift your arms and cross them over your chest—a complex, coordinated movement that looks exactly like someone trying to protect themselves.

What do the doctors say? That’s just a spinal reflex. It proves you’re dead, not alive.

Read that again. A complex protective movement—lifting both arms and crossing them over your chest—is dismissed as a meaningless spinal twitch. The very action that should scream “this person is conscious and terrified” is redefined as proof of death.

This is mental gymnastics of the highest order.

The Lazarus effect occurs most commonly during the apnoea test—the test where they disconnect you from the ventilator to see if you’ll breathe on your own. Think about what this means: you’ve had a massive car crash. You’re so badly injured you can barely move, including the muscles around your ribcage. You can’t breathe without mechanical support.

That’s precisely what the breathing machine is for—to support you whilst you’re so badly injured you otherwise couldn’t breathe.

But then the doctors perform their brain death tests. And during the apnoea test, they take you off that breathing support. Your oxygen drops. Your carbon dioxide rises. And in that moment of suffocation, you lift your arms to protect yourself.

The response? “That proves you’re brain dead.”

When I first read about this, I thought it must be extraordinarily rare. If you search Google for “What is the Lazarus effect?”, Google’s AI cheerfully tells you it’s “a rare but documented medical phenomenon.”

Rare. That’s the word they use.

Then I looked at some actual medical studies. Researchers prospectively evaluated 38 patients who fulfilled the criteria for brain death using a standardised protocol. They found that 15 patients—39%—exhibited spontaneous or reflex movements.[17]

The most common was finger jerks. But they also documented undulating toe flexion, triple flexion response, the Lazarus sign (arms raising and crossing the chest), pronation-extension reflex, and facial myokymia.

The researchers concluded: “These movements may be more common than reported and do not preclude the diagnosis of brain death.”

Read that last sentence again. Movements occur in nearly 40% of brain-dead patients, and the official position is that this “does not preclude the diagnosis.”

So when Google’s AI tells you it’s “rare,” they’re lying. When you ask if it could be 40%, they’ll tell you it’s “definitely not 40%.” But the peer-reviewed medical literature—published in Neurology, one of the most respected journals in the field—says otherwise.[17]

Forty per cent. Nearly half of all brain death determinations involve movements that, in any other context, would be recognised as signs of consciousness and distress.

And here’s the part that really exposes the game: medical guidelines recommend that families be removed from the room during apnoea testing.[18]

Why? Because if families see their loved one lift their arms, move, or show signs of distress when taken off the ventilator, they might object. They might refuse to allow organ donation. They might demand the doctors stop.

So the solution isn’t to reconsider whether these movements indicate consciousness. The solution is to make sure nobody who loves the patient is watching when it happens.

It’s the same pattern as the Facebook groups dismissed as “misinformation.” The real misinformation is preventing families from witnessing what actually happens during these tests. Keep them out of the room. Keep them in the dark. Then gaslight them afterwards if they dare question what occurred.

When Anthony Hoover was crying and moving during organ retrieval, some clinicians still wanted to continue. The system is designed to make as many concerning signs as possible formally deniable. Get it into the rules, into the guidelines, into the law—so that when improprieties occur, the response is: “That’s not my fault. That’s just how the system works. Them’s the rules, mate.”

The safeguards are fake. They say there have to be two different doctors signing off. They say it would never encourage people towards organ donation.

But very quickly it’s gone from that to politicians like Maryanne Thomas in Victoria wanting to make it mandatory that doctors tell patients they have the option of being killed if they want.

The same pattern happened in Canada.

The Cases That Slip Through

Anthony Hoover was declared brain dead. During organ retrieval, he was crying and moving. Some clinicians still wanted to continue the process.[14]

Someone happened to refuse that day. But what about all the times when the people who refused weren’t there? What about when only the people who wanted to continue were present?

And the individuals who refused—have they still got their jobs? Or were they moved out, demoted, transferred to a different clinic?

Amber Ebanks was declared brain dead. Her family and physicians disputed that she met the criteria. They needed court orders to delay withdrawal.[15]

But these aren’t isolated cases. They’re just the ones that happened to make the news. Here are more:[19]

Zack Dunlap (March 2008) – Declared brain dead following an ATV accident. He later recounted hearing doctors discussing harvesting his organs whilst he was paralysed and unable to respond. He recovered.

Val Thomas (May 2008) – Doctors declared her brain dead after detecting no brain waves for more than 17 hours. The family was discussing organ donation when she suddenly woke up and started speaking to nurses.

A 41-year-old woman (2009) – Declared brain dead. Woke up in the operating room just as her organs were about to be removed.

Madeleine Gauron (July 2011) – Quebec woman identified as viable for organ donation after brain death diagnosis. Surprised her family and physicians when she recovered from coma, opened her eyes, and began eating.

An Australian woman (May 2011) – Declared brain dead. Regained consciousness after family fought for weeks against doctor recommendations that her ventilator be shut off.

Carina Melchior (2012) – 19-year-old Danish woman. Doctors declared her brain dead and approached the family about organ donation. She woke up whilst doctors were discussing her case at her bedside. Later featured in the documentary “The Girl Who Refused to Die.”

Colleen Burns (July 2013) – New York woman pronounced brain dead. Unexpectedly awoke just as her organs were about to be removed for transplant.

George Pickering (January 2015) – 27-year-old Texan pronounced brain dead. His father threatened to shoot himself if anyone disconnected life support. During the standoff with police, George repeatedly squeezed his father’s hand. He woke up that evening and made a strong recovery.

A Swedish man (2017) – Declared brain dead. Heard doctors discussing organ donation with his family but couldn’t respond. It took three days until another doctor returned from holiday, looked at his scans, and said “This doesn’t look too bad.” His girlfriend and sister had to fight with the night nurse to give him cortisone. He recovered.

TK – Declared brain dead at age 4 from acute meningitis. Survived for nearly 20 years after declaration of brain death. Underwent proportional physical growth and sexual maturation—features indicating ongoing brain function. His case was confirmed by autopsy.[20]

Jahi McMath (2013) – 13-year-old girl declared brain dead. Family refused to withdraw life support. She continued to grow and went through puberty over several years. As Dr. Alan Shewmon noted: “I’ve never heard of a corpse that underwent puberty before.”[21]

Dr. Alan Shewmon has documented 175 cases of long-term survival after brain death declaration.[20] Thirty pregnant women diagnosed with brain death were kept on life support for weeks or months so their babies could mature—some retained blood pressure homeostasis, robust immune response, and proportional growth.[20]

These aren’t isolated anomalies. These are the cases where someone happened to refuse, where families happened to fight, where doctors happened to wait long enough.

How many didn’t make it? How many times did everyone in the room want to continue with organ procurement, and so they did?

The Gaslighting Playbook

When I asked ChatGPT about this, it told me there’s never been a case of someone being declared brain dead who wasn’t actually brain dead and then had their organs removed. Never happened.

Then it admitted there are lots of cases where doctors mistakenly said someone was brain dead.

That’s what I was talking about in the first place. They said someone was brain dead when they weren’t. Whether it’s a mistake or a lie, the result is the same.

It’s classic gaslighting. “Zero cases” of wrongful brain death becomes “only misdiagnoses” when evidence surfaces. A distinction without difference that protects the system.

The American Academy of Neurology states that “brain death has occurred when the irreversible loss of all functions of the entire brain including the brainstem has been determined.” Yet it endorses the belief that “preserved neuroendocrine function may be present and is not inconsistent with the whole brain standard of death.”[16]

This is a logical contradiction. The system openly admits some brain function persists whilst maintaining patients are dead. It’s a semantic trick that protects institutional interests whilst invalidating concerns about premature organ harvesting.

The Organ Donor Registry Deception

Dianne Nguyen, who created The Right To Fight page, swore with her husband they’d never donate their organs because they’d heard these stories.

Here’s the problem: when you fill out the form online to change your donor status, it doesn’t update the DMV. The DMV list is what doctors use as their authoritative source to prove you’re a donor.

They know it’s fake. They know it’s lies. But it’s just one of their many lies.

The Last Channel Standing

When I first looked at this topic, AI assumed I was going to write about how terrible the Facebook groups are for spreading misinformation. How dare anyone question the doctors, the great men in white coats, the Science™.

But here’s the reality: the papers and mainstream media are supported and paid for by medical advertising. They’re not going to investigate. They’re not going to challenge their own advertisers who are paying for their survival.

Doctors won’t talk about it. Anyone who talks about it becomes an ex-doctor. They won’t keep their job.

What’s left? Only social media. Only places like The Right To Fight Facebook group where real people can tell their stories without institutional gatekeeping.

The cases that get reported in larger media outlets—regional news covering Anthony Hoover and Amber Ebanks—are treated seriously. But for everyone else, if a newspaper didn’t pick up their story and it was only said on Facebook, it’s supposedly misinformation.

How dare the great unwashed open their mouths and talk about what happened to them.

The Euthanasia Connection

In Europe, euthanasia is becoming a major source of organ donors. When you’ve got someone who’s been given less than 12 months to live and they choose assisted dying, they’ve likely got organs that are unaffected by their condition.

The system has a vested interest in making euthanasia readily available and ensuring people know about it.

It’s the same pattern. The safeguards erode quickly. What starts as “only if they think of it themselves” becomes “doctors must inform patients of the option.”

The profit motive doesn’t disappear just because you call something non-profit.

What This Means for You

I’m not telling you what to believe about organ donation. I’m asking you to look at the evidence and ask uncomfortable questions.

When no registry tracks misdiagnoses, when “independent” doctors work for hospitals profiting from transplants, when patients declared brain dead receive drugs that suppress consciousness, when documented cases of people showing signs of life are dismissed, when whistleblowers lose their jobs—we’re not looking at a system designed to protect patients.

We’re looking at a system designed to protect itself.

The question isn’t whether organ transplants save lives. They do. The question is whether we’re willing to accept a system with no real accountability, no transparent oversight, and financial incentives that directly contradict patient protection.

When AI, mainstream media, and medical institutions all reflexively defend the same profitable system, and when questioning becomes conspiracy, we’re not looking at science.

We’re looking at ideology protecting its revenue stream.

The families sharing their stories on social media aren’t spreading misinformation. They’re the only ones telling the truth when every official channel has a reason to stay quiet.

And that should terrify you.

What You Can Do Right Now

If, after reading all of this, you’ve decided you don’t want to donate your organs—because you understand that hospitals may view your death as a source of income rather than prioritise saving your life—then simply updating your organ donation status online probably won’t protect you.

In Australia, you can update your status on my.gov.au. In America, there are various websites. Different countries have different systems. But here’s the question nobody asks: who can actually access that record when it matters?

Imagine you have a traumatic injury. You’re in hospital, unconscious. The organ procurement team arrives to tell your family you’re brain dead, there’s nothing to be done, and they should step outside whilst the doctors “finish up.”

How is your family going to prove otherwise? How will they prove you never consented to donation if the hospital claims your DMV record says you’re a donor—even though you changed it online and the update never reached the DMV?

If you want to ensure your wishes are known and enforceable, you need to create evidence your family can use:

1. Screenshot your donor status after updating it online. Don’t just submit the form and hope it works. Capture proof that you changed it, with the date visible.

2. Email the screenshot to your family members. Multiple people. Not just one. Make sure they save it and know where to find it.

3. Record a video of yourself stating clearly: “I do not consent to organ donation. I do not authorise the removal of any organs or tissues from my body after death.” Include the date. Send it to your family.

4. Put it in writing. A signed, dated document stating your refusal to donate organs. Give copies to family members. Keep one with your important documents.

5. Tell your family explicitly that if you’re ever declared brain dead, they have the right to refuse organ donation, demand time, request second opinions from doctors not employed by that hospital, and insist on being present during any testing.

Because if you ever need to fight for your life—if you ever need “The Right To Fight,” as the Facebook group is named—you need to give your family the ammunition to do it.

Without clear, documented evidence of your wishes, doctors can pressure grieving family members, claim you were registered as a donor, and rush the process before anyone has time to question it.

The system is designed to make it easy for organs to be procured and difficult for families to object. The paperwork, the protocols, the “independent” doctors, the removal of families during crucial tests—all of it serves the same purpose: to facilitate organ harvesting with minimum resistance.

Your family will be grieving, confused, overwhelmed. Doctors will be authoritative, urgent, professionally compassionate whilst pushing for a quick decision. Your relatives will be told it’s what you would have wanted, that it’s a beautiful final gift, that other people are dying on waiting lists.

Unless you give them the tools to fight back, they won’t be able to. And by the time they realise something was wrong—if they ever do—it will be too late.

Make your wishes crystal clear. Document them. Share them. Make it impossible for anyone to claim they didn’t know.

Because once you’re declared brain dead, the people who profit from your organs will be in the room. The people who love you might not be.

And that should terrify you even more.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Has anyone ever recovered after being declared brain dead?

Yes. At least 175 documented cases show long-term survival after brain death declaration.[20] Specific examples include Zack Dunlap (heard doctors discussing organ harvest whilst paralysed), Val Thomas (woke during organ donation discussion), Colleen Burns (woke before organ removal), and TK (survived 20 years, went through puberty).[19][20]

Q: How accurate are brain death determinations?

Only 25% of doctors conduct brain death testing according to current practice guidelines.[13] 10% skip the apnoea test entirely, which constitutes incorrect diagnosis.[13] 23% of patients declared brain dead retain hypothalamic function, showing ongoing brain activity.[12]

Q: Why do brain dead patients receive anaesthesia and pain medication?

90% of organ donors receive neuromuscular blockers, 63.3% receive anaesthetics, and 33.9% receive opioids like fentanyl.[8] The official explanation is “organ preservation,” but these drugs suppress the same movements and responses used to diagnose brain death. Protocols require waiting periods after administration, but no independent oversight ensures compliance.

Q: What is the Lazarus effect?

The Lazarus effect describes movements during brain death testing, including arms raising and crossing the chest. A medical study found 39% of brain-dead patients exhibited these movements.[17] Medical guidelines dismiss these as “spinal reflexes” and recommend removing families from the room during testing.[18]

Q: Are the “independent doctors” who verify brain death truly independent?

No. “Independent” means they’re not on the transplant team or caring for recipients. It doesn’t mean they’re independent from the hospital profiting from organ procurement. Both doctors typically work for the same institution that will generate revenue from the organs. Organ procurement organisations average $2.3 million yearly profit.[5]

Q: Does updating my organ donor status online protect me?

Often no. Online updates frequently don’t sync with DMV records, which hospitals use as authoritative proof of donor status. Diane Nguyen’s husband changed his status online, but doctors still claimed his DMV record showed donor registration. You need screenshots, videos, and written documents that your family holds.

Q: Is there a registry tracking brain death misdiagnoses?

No. The United States has no national registry tracking brain death misdiagnoses. Without official tracking, documented cases remain classified as “anecdotes” rather than statistical evidence.

Q: When was brain death defined and why?

December 1967: First heart transplant raised ethical questions about when donors are dead.[7] August 1968: Harvard defined brain death.[6] The timing suggests brain death was defined to facilitate organ transplantation, though this was never officially acknowledged.

Key Takeaways

• Brain death testing is deeply flawed: only 25% of doctors follow proper protocols, and 39% of patients show protective movements during testing that are dismissed as reflexes
• “Independent” doctors verifying brain death work for the same hospitals profiting from organ procurement (averaging $2.3 million yearly per organisation)
• At least 175 documented cases show long-term survival after brain death declaration, including patients who went through puberty years after being declared dead
• No national registry tracks brain death misdiagnoses, making systematic errors invisible and dismissible as “anecdotes”
• 90% of organ donors receive drugs that suppress consciousness and movement before brain death testing, with no independent oversight ensuring proper wait times
• Updating donor status online often doesn’t work because changes don’t sync with DMV records that hospitals use as proof
• To protect your wishes: screenshot your status, email proof to multiple family members, record a video statement, create written documents, and explicitly tell family their rights to refuse, demand time, and require doctors from outside the hospital

References

1. Mulder J, Sonneveld H, van Dijk N, et al. Practice and challenges for organ donation after medical assistance in dying: A scoping review including the results of the first international roundtable in 2021. American Journal of Transplantation. 2023. https://www.amjtransplant.org/article/S1600-6135(23)00029-1/fulltext
2. Bollen J, van Dijk N. Feasibility of organ donation following voluntary assisted dying in Australia: lessons from international practice. Medical Journal of Australia. 2023. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.5694/mja2.52016
3. Organ donation after medical assistance in dying. Wikipedia. 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation_after_medical_assistance_in_dying
4. Bastami S, Matthes O, Krones T, et al. Systematic review of attitudes toward donation after cardiac death. Critical Care Medicine. 2013;41(12):2804-2814.
5. The New York Times. “When a Transplant Hospital Must Close, Patients Are Left Adrift.” 2018. Analysis of OPO financial data.
6. Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School. A Definition of Irreversible Coma. JAMA. 1968;205(6):337-340.
7. Barnard CN. The operation. A human cardiac transplant: an interim report of a successful operation performed at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town. South African Medical Journal. 1967;41:1271-1274.
8. Joffe AR. Anesthesia for patients declared dead by neurologic criteria (brain death). Anesthesiology Clinics. 2013;31(3):577-588.
9. Australian Museum. Defining death. https://australian.museum/about/history/exhibitions/death-the-last-taboo/defining-death/
10. Greer DM, Kirschen MP, Lewis A, et al. Pediatric and Adult Brain Death/Death by Neurologic Criteria Consensus Guideline. Neurology. 2023. https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000207740
11. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Financial Data. 2016 Medicare Cost Reports.
12. Joffe AR. Are recent defences of the brain death concept adequate? Bioethics. 2010;24(2):47-53.
13. Greer DM, Varelas PN, Haque S, et al. Variability of brain death determination guidelines in leading US neurologic institutions. Neurology. 2008;70(4):284-289.
14. Multiple news sources including Kentucky Health News regarding Anthony Hoover case, 2021.
15. Court documents, Amber Ebanks case, 2023. Multiple media reports.
16. American Academy of Neurology Position Statement on Brain Death. Updated 2010. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545144/
17. Saposnik G, Bueri JA, Mauriño J, Saizar R, Garretto NS. Spontaneous and reflex movements in brain death. Neurology. 2000;54(1):221-223. doi: 10.1212/wnl.54.1.221. PMID: 10636153. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10636153/
18. ANZICS Statement on Death and Organ Donation. Edition 4.1, 2022. Guidelines regarding family presence during apnoea testing.
19. Multiple documented cases compiled from: KGOV.com List of Brain Dead Patients Who’ve Recovered https://kgov.com/brain-dead-patients-who-have-recovered; Joffe AR, et al. Brain death and true patient care. PMC. 2016. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5102188/
20. Repertinger S, Fitzgibbons WP, Omojola MF, Brumback RA. Long survival following bacterial meningitis-associated brain destruction. Journal of Child Neurology. 2006;21(7):591-595. Also: Shewmon DA. Chronic “brain death”: Meta-analysis and conceptual consequences. Neurology. 1998;51(6):1538-1545. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5102206/
21. Shewmon DA, as quoted in: Debate simmers over when doctors should declare brain death. NPR. February 11, 2024. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/11/1228330149/brain-death-definition

I realised something that changed how I see the entire financial system.

Banks create money from nothing. Then they charge interest on it.

It’s a legalised filthy trick.

When a bank issues a mortgage, they don’t lend out deposits from savers. They create new money through an accounting entry. The loan appears as an asset on their balance sheet. The deposit appears as a liability.

Both sides balance. Both are created simultaneously.

The bank’s cost? Essentially zero.

Your cost? Decades of real labour.

The Asymmetry That Nobody Talks About

Consider a typical Australian mortgage of $600,000 at 6.5% over 30 years.

The borrower repays approximately $1,367,000 total. The bank claims roughly $767,000 in profit for creating that money electronically.

The interest often equals the principal itself. Meanwhile, bank expenses have plummeted with digitalisation.

Everything runs on computers now. Very low overhead.

Yet interest payments have become one of the largest expenses in people’s lives. They keep increasing.

When newspapers lament that property prices haven’t doubled in a decade, they’re revealing who the housing market actually serves.

This Isn’t Capitalism

Capitalism should be value for value.

You produce something. Someone else produces something. You exchange.

Fractional banking violates this completely.

Banks produce nothing. They create credit through accounting entries. Then they demand repayment with money earned through actual work.

It’s money for nothing for the banks. Meanwhile, they share profits with politicians and media to keep them quiet.

The Government Can’t Print Money Because Inflation

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Governments can’t create money directly. That would cause inflation, they say. It would create instability.

So instead, governments sell bonds.

Who buys these bonds? The Reserve Bank of Australia holds about 33% of them. Commercial banks hold another substantial portion, probably another third.

Where does the Reserve Bank get money to buy government bonds?

They create it from nothing.

Where do commercial banks get money to buy government bonds?

They create it from nothing through credit creation.

So the government “can’t create money because that causes inflation”.

But the central bank can create money to lend to the government. And commercial banks can create money to lend to the government.

The government then pays interest on money that was created from nothing.

Taxpayers fund that interest.

The Historical Theft

Before 1959, Australia had the Commonwealth Bank.

It was government-owned. It functioned as both a commercial and central bank. When the government created money through the Commonwealth Bank, they weren’t paying interest to external private entities.

They were essentially paying interest to themselves.

Then Robert Menzies introduced the Reserve Bank Act of 1959. This separated central banking from government control.

Since then, house prices have exploded. In Sydney and Melbourne, median house prices now sit at 8-9 times the average annual wage, far beyond any reasonable affordability measure.

Taxpayers now pay interest on money created from nothing by private institutions.

This pattern happened everywhere. Not just Australia.

When The Data Suddenly Appears

Ask for historical house price data and you’ll hear excuses.

“Oh, nobody was counting back then, mate.”

“Data wasn’t collected systematically.”

“Records are fragmentary.”

Funny how the data gap exists exactly when you need it most.

But look at what data does exist:

1901: A standard house in Sydney cost around £1,000 (roughly $2,000)

1950s: Around $7,150 — prices remained relatively stable in real terms for half a century

1960: Around $12,700

1970: Around $18,700 in Sydney

1980: Around $76,500 — starting to accelerate

1990: Around $184,600 — more than doubled in a decade

2000: Around $312,000

2010: Around $575,900

2020s: Around $1.4 million in Sydney

Notice the pattern?

From 1901 to 1950 — fifty years — prices barely moved in real terms.

From 1950 to 1980 — another thirty years — modest, manageable growth.

Then suddenly, from 1980 onwards, prices go absolutely vertical.

What changed?

Financial deregulation in the 1980s removed the last constraints on private banks creating credit. The floodgates opened.

Before deregulation, banks faced lending limits and interest rate controls. After deregulation, they could create as much money as they wanted through mortgage lending.

And they did.

The explosion in house prices perfectly tracks the expansion of bank credit creation. It’s not supply and demand. It’s not population growth. It’s not a housing shortage.

It’s private banks creating money and funnelling it into property.

The “data gap” for the first half of the 20th century is convenient. It obscures the fact that for generations, house prices were stable and affordable.

Only when private banks gained unlimited power to create credit did prices become impossible for ordinary wage earners.

The Business Cycle Is A Feature

Fractional banking creates inflation through the money multiplier effect.

This inflation creates economic crises. They call it the business cycle.

Banks make money on the way up. Then markets crash. Rates drop.

Institutional investors backed by cheap bank loans buy up housing on the cheap.

Over time, places like Australia transform. People who were free and built their own lives become nations of renters.

When banks risk going broke, politicians create central banks as backstops to bail them out. With money created from nothing by the banks.

Which taxpayers pay interest on.

The Coordinated Silence

Try finding a single headline from any major newspaper questioning whether central banks should exist.

Not whether they should adjust interest rates. Whether they should exist at all.

You won’t find one.

The media doesn’t discuss it. Politicians don’t debate it. Even AI systems are programmed to obfuscate it.

When you try to get straight answers about how this system works, you have to wring the truth out. Every institution deflects, minimises, and redirects.

The stats that really count don’t exist either.

Try finding decade-by-decade median house prices tied to median incomes from 1900 onwards. The data that would prove exactly when and how ordinary people lost their economic freedom.

It’s either missing, destroyed, or buried in fragmented records that make analysis nearly impossible.

The Dependency Trap

Here’s why the system persists.

Banks make sure to pay the institutions who might speak out about it.

In a world of rapidly rising prices, everyone needs the fake money from the banks to get by.

Politicians rely on banks. Media organisations rely on banks. Universities rely on banks. Think tanks rely on banks.

They keep quiet to be supported or paid in kind.

Even people who understand the system participate in it. Because what choice do they have?

The inflation banks create makes prices so high that borrowing becomes the only option. You need their created-from-nothing money just to afford basic housing.

Then you spend decades repaying it with real labour.

We pay interest to banks for currency they created from nothing to lend us. We pay taxes to governments to service bonds banks bought with money they created from nothing.

Supposedly this is good for society.

The entire financial system runs on a legalised trick that converts your labour into their profit.

And everyone who might expose it depends on it for survival.

Gay bashing is wrong. Straight bashing is also wrong.

For decades, gay bashing was rampant. Homosexuality was criminalised. The state followed grown people into their homes to inspect their private behaviour. Whether we like it or not, it’s nobody’s business what consenting adults do in private when there are no victims. That was wrong.

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”
— Thomas Jefferson

The Brief Peace of the 1990s

Then it mostly stopped. Somewhere around the 1990s, society approached a centre point. People realised you have to be civil and respect difference. Live and let live. Don’t attack people for being different. Mind your own business.

For a brief moment, we had peace.

The peace didn’t last.

When the Pendulum Kept Swinging

Shortly afterwards, the counterattack started. Gay marriage. Gay adoption. Surrogacy. Forcing people to accept all of this. And now, forcing people to pretend they agree that a bearded man with chest hair is a lady.

It’s like two sides in a war. The attack from one side stopped—that was good. But the moment it stopped, the counterattack began. We’ve been in it for decades.

Now, people around the world are being persecuted merely for stating simple truths. The pendulum swung from persecution to protection, then kept swinging into compulsion.

The Law Has No Special Powers

“The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose!”
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850)

Frederick Bastiat wrote something in 1850 that most people still don’t understand: the law is merely the collective power of individuals to protect themselves. Nothing more.

What the Law Can Do

The law only has the powers that any single person has. A person can stop someone from attacking them. They can defend themselves. They can stop someone from stealing their property.

The courts can catch a thief or attacker on behalf of the state. They can lock someone up as punishment. But they can’t go out and attack someone else or take something from someone else—any more than an individual person can.

No Special Rights

One person doesn’t have more rights than another person. One country doesn’t have more rights than another country. And the law does not have more powers than any individual people.

Bastiat’s framework is simple: you have the right to life, liberty, and property. The law exists only to protect those rights. The moment it goes beyond that, it becomes perverted.

Three Cases, One Principle

Case One: The Baker and Compelled Labour

Consider the baker who refused to design a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex marriage.

He wasn’t refusing to sell them bread or everyday commerce. He wasn’t punishing them for their behaviour. They were trying to force him to perform a specialised service—to help them celebrate their relationship, to partake in an activity he didn’t agree with.

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
— George Washington

The law can’t force someone to do something. It’s only there to stop people from attacking other people or taking their property. That’s it.

It’s like paying an pacifist artist to paint you a picture of a bloody battle. The artist says, “I don’t want to draw that picture.” You respond, “No, you have to, or I’ll make the courts force you to pay me money.”

That’s the same as saying, “If you don’t do something for me that you don’t like, I’m going to punch you in the face.”

Violence by Any Other Name

Whether it’s you physically attacking someone or having the law attack them, the outcome is the same. At the end of the day, the law is always enforced by violence. Refuse the court order? You’ll be dragged off to jail.

If you’re trying to have laws violently applied to someone who hasn’t infringed on your right to life, liberty or property, you’re not the victim. You’re the aggressor.

The United States Supreme Court recognised this distinction. Refusing to design a special cake with celebratory words is different from refusing to sell any cake at all.

Case Two: Surrogacy and the Enslaved Child

Now consider surrogacy.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children observes that commercial surrogacy as currently practised usually constitutes sale of children under international human rights law.

This triggers legitimate use of law under Bastiat’s framework. A third party is being harmed: the child.

When Harm Justifies Intervention

The child has been kidnapped—purchased as a slave for personal gratification. Even if they’re not abusing the child, the mere fact of taking the child from its mother is kidnapping. The fact that they’ve paid a poor person in desperate circumstances makes no difference.

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
— Abraham Lincoln

Surrogacy is kidnapping and slavery. It doesn’t matter who does it. Everything must be applied consistently. There is no such thing as special rights for special groups.

The Child’s Right to Know

A child has the right to grow up knowing who its people are. Its mum and dad, or adopted parents who should tell the child where it comes from from the very beginning—to avoid a culture of shame.

They should be open and let the child have the freedom to get to know who they want as they grow up. Everyone has that right.

The Surrogacy Deception

In surrogacy, people act selfishly, using others to get what they want.

If surrogacy was such a great thing, the people who say it’s good would encourage their twenty-year-old daughters to do it. Tell your eighteen-year-old to take two years off school and be a surrogate mother.

But they wouldn’t. Because they know it’s bad.

So they go to poor countries and call it a “free commercial arrangement.” They’re using economic power to get poor people to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do.

Packaging Doesn’t Change the Crime

It doesn’t matter where the child comes from or how the transaction is structured. No one has the right to deny someone knowledge of their background and origins. To do that is kidnapping.

If you kidnap someone as a slave, no money changes hands. You might say it’s not a commercial transaction. But it’s all the same whether you kidnap the person yourself or buy them from someone else who kidnapped them.

If someone shoots someone, painting the bullet pink and drawing a flower on it doesn’t make them any less dead. No matter what you call it—calling it surrogacy, calling it anything else—if you’ve intentionally taken a child away from its kin, that’s harm.

When Legitimate Adoption Occurs

Sometimes young parents or those facing difficulties freely choose to give a child up for adoption. They don’t believe they can raise the child, and they refuse that responsibility.

In that case, when someone else—a loving mother and father—steps in to take that responsibility, that’s a good thing.

Every child has the right to a mother and father. In some cases they don’t get one, but that should be the pinnacle of all laws related to adoption. That is what children should have, and what they must get in any adoption arrangement.

The Truth Sets Everyone Free

But regardless of the scenario, when a child is adopted, the child has the right to know the truth. Everyone has the right to know the truth about their background.

“Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.”
— George Washington

Smart adoptive parents tell the child the truth from the outset. They may even take the child to see the birth mother when possible, letting the child know their relatives and the true story.

There’s no hidden horror lurking in the background. By using the truth to inoculate against fear, they recognise the child ultimately has the right to choose their own destiny. They’re not parents by force—they’re parents whilst honouring that child’s autonomy.

Most Western states and countries increasingly recognise the right of the child to know who the birth parents are. But that’s not enough. The child must be told the truth.

Surrogacy: The Opposite of Legitimate Adoption

Surrogacy is the opposite. People custom-create a scenario that never had to happen—for their own gain. They want a child who’s not theirs. The mother agrees because she needs the money.

That’s a crime. Whether or not the law recognises it as a crime, they’ve infringed on someone else’s rights. In any situation where someone infringes on someone else’s rights, it doesn’t matter what the law says—crime has occurred. Nothing any fake law says can change that.

These days we’re seeing two men “adopting” a child from a surrogate mother. That’s an obvious and open crime where a child is being denied the right to its true parents.

If the child were told the truth—”we bought you from your parents, we paid them to have you and then took you away”—would the child not hate the fake so-called parents who did that?

We’ve even seen cases reported in Australian media where three men in a “throuple” relationship fought for all three to have parental rights to their children. In California, three dudes “adopted” a child, and are now “fighting for their regional government to recognise the parental rights of all three men.”

It doesn’t matter what gets allowed by the law. There’s always someone else claiming to be a victim, that the system isn’t fair to them. For these people, it’s all about them. They don’t really care about the child.

Anyone who really cares about children would say: children belong with their mothers and fathers. Anyone who wants to intentionally create a situation other than that is an abuser and a criminal, regardless of what the law says.

Case Three: Compelled Speech and Gender

Nobody has the right to force someone else to tell a lie. Full stop.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
— George Orwell

It doesn’t matter whether it’s legal penalties or social consequences. People have the right to free association. You can’t force people to hang out with people they don’t want to hang out with.

The Politeness Trap

People are constructing scenarios where they’re forcing others to agree with things that are not true. Disagree? You’ll be penalised because someone was offended, or a “protected class” was offended.

But there is no such thing as special rights for special people.

You might choose to use someone’s preferred pronouns out of politeness. In business, someone says they’re a lady but you don’t think they look like one. For polite reasons, you might assume they are what they say they are.

But if you don’t, and if they take offence, they don’t have to deal with you either. They can refuse. You are both free. You can’t force association. People must choose for themselves.

When the Mask Slips

These days, we know it’s a piss-take. We see men in dresses with beards and chest hair demanding that someone else say they’re a woman.

You cannot force someone else to lie.

There are no special rights for special groups. Everyone has exactly the same rights.

The Uncomfortable Middle

This position is one of non-aggression.

It’s not aggressive conservatism—it doesn’t want the state criminalising private behaviour between consenting adults.

It’s not aggressive progressivism—it won’t pretend that compelling speech or celebrating every lifestyle choice is somehow liberation.

“The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”
— Thomas Sowell

One Consistent Principle

You cannot attack someone who hasn’t attacked you first. You cannot take someone’s property. You cannot force someone’s labour or speech.

And when a genuinely vulnerable third party is being harmed—like a child denied knowledge of their origins—that’s when legitimate intervention begins.

Where We Are Now

The pendulum swung from persecution to protection. Then it kept swinging.

We’re now at a point where stating obvious truths can get you dragged before courts or human resources departments. Where refusing to participate in celebrations you disagree with makes you a bigot. Where economic power coerces poor women into bearing children for wealthy couples.

Rights are simpler than some would want you to believe. People don’t have the right to make other people do things. Only the right not to have things done to them.

The Control of Information

The Victorian government, for example, was happy for kids to watch all manner of social media when it was under heavy ideological censorship—Twitter and Facebook controlled by Biden Administration censorship directives, constantly pushing the woke agenda and the Gender Crap.

But now that X broke free of that control, and Facebook loosened its grip, suddenly there are simple memes floating around everywhere. Memes that show the truth in a simple way that can’t be denied, mocking the fakeness and lies.

That resonates with kids who know they’re being sold complex lies—lies that can be revealed by a simple meme. In 2024, papers were complaining that kids are becoming more “right-wing”—which really means they’re not extreme left. If you’re not extreme left, you’re extreme right in their minds.

The government wants schools to be the sole purveyors of information to children. They’re hoping kids watch all the woke content on Netflix and don’t hear too much from their parents.

But kids are mercilessly mocking the woke ideology and the Gender Crap that some teachers are trying to push.

The School Library Battle

They’re very happy to fill school libraries with books promoting their ideology. But when regular families stand up and say they don’t want their kids taught Gender Crap, suddenly the media claims schools are being “taken over by religious people.”

It’s not a religious takeover. It’s just regular people who’ve always been against this stuff. Most people are happy to respect the rights of others—they’re the ones who supported “live and let live” in the 1990s. They just don’t want their children indoctrinated with ideology that tells them to cut off body parts.

Being “Groomed in Ideology”

The Australian federal government’s Step Together website warns about “right-wing extremism” online, asking: “At what point do you think a young person starts to show the difference between being an avid gamer versus getting pulled down a rabbit hole of being groomed in ideology?”

They call it “being groomed in ideology” when kids question what they’re being taught in school.

But they didn’t call it grooming when schools were telling young kids to take hormones and have irreversible hormone treatment. They didn’t call it grooming when every school in Victoria had documents stating the school could facilitate a child’s gender transition without the parents’ knowledge.

They’re lying to these kids. Making them think it’s a solution that will actually work—when doctors can hardly reattach a severed finger successfully, let alone create complex body parts from nothing. Body parts that naturally have systems to maintain cleanliness and prevent infection. The fake man-made constructions don’t have any of that, leading to serious infection problems that are indeed documented.

The government thinks that’s completely acceptable.

But the moment children start to read information questioning unlimited immigration, or banks creating money out of nothing, or foreign countries—especially strategic threats—buying up all our land? Suddenly they imagine kids marching around wearing swastikas.

The Real Reason for the Social Media Ban

In 2024, papers were complaining that kids are becoming more “right-wing.” In 2025, as the government’s own Step Together website shows, they’re scared that young people are being “groomed” by ideology—meaning anything that questions their narrative.

And now, in 2025, Australia passed the world’s strictest social media ban—prohibiting anyone under 16 from accessing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Snapchat and Reddit.

For all this time, the government didn’t care about kids on social media. They were very happy for kids to be on it when they thought it was going their way—when they thought kids were being swamped with woke content and Gender Crap.

But then the censorship dropped. What they thought was a good tool to push their ideology started allowing kids to get a free flow of truth. That wasn’t convenient for them.

So now they want to ban it.

But it’s not really about protecting children. They don’t like anyone being able to talk freely on social media. The ban requires connecting every account to government ID. That’s the real goal—so they can use force to stop people expressing themselves freely.

They can’t do that if they don’t know who’s talking online.

Rights Are Simple

Rights are simpler than some would have you believe.

“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
— John F. Kennedy

What Rights Really Mean

To have a right to do something means that when you do it, you are not in the wrong. You’re not harming anyone else. Therefore it is not wrong to do it, therefore you have the right to do it.

It’s not right to take a child away from its parents needlessly. If you do something that’s not right, then you’re in the wrong. Nobody has the right to do something that is wrong.

People don’t have the right to make other people do things. Only the right not to have things done to them.

Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying law just changed in a way most people missed.

Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has pushed through amendments that allow doctors to tell desperate, dying patients they can provide poison to kill them. They couldn’t before. The original 2017 legislation explicitly prohibited it.

That prohibition wasn’t accidental. It was one of 68 so-called “safeguards” that we were told would protect vulnerable people from coercion.

Now it’s gone.

Mary-Anne Thomas and the Erosion of Safeguards

Mary-Anne Thomas has been the architect behind these changes. While she posts on Facebook about how tragic it is when young depressed people commit suicide, she’s simultaneously dismantling the protections that prevented doctors from suggesting death to vulnerable patients.

Mary-Anne Thomas has made medical misogyny a signature issue. She launched a Victorian government inquiry into women’s pain. In November 2024, she told The Age she was “shocked” that more than 13,000 women and girls shared stories of having serious pain dismissed or being gaslit by doctors who told them they had mental health issues.

She warned the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners to “brace yourself” for the inquiry’s findings about women’s experiences with doctors. She said women were treated as drug addicts when they asked for pain relief. She blamed Medicare rebates, medical training, and “conscious and unconscious bias” in the health profession.

Thomas said it revealed “a misogynist view that pain is part of women’s burden.”

But then she thinks it’s perfectly fine for those very same doctors, the ones she says dismiss and gaslight women, to tell vulnerable women at their darkest hour that they can kill them.

These women went to hospital for help. If they wanted to kill themselves, they could have. But they didn’t. They went looking for hope, for treatment, for care.

And Mary-Anne Thomas wants to force doctors to hand them a pamphlet about death.

The hypocrisy is staggering. The fakeness is hard to comprehend.

The amendments don’t just allow doctors to provide information. Mary-Anne Thomas wanted to make it mandatory. Doctors must tell patients they can kill them with poison, even patients who never asked, never considered it.

This is the same pattern we’ve seen elsewhere. First it’s terminal illness. Then it’s depression. Then it’s poverty. Mary-Anne Thomas is following the playbook.

The Psychological Blow

Think about what happens in that hospital room.

You’re sick. You’re in pain. You’ve spent your life caring for others. Now it’s your turn to be cared for.

You go to the doctor looking for help. For treatment. For hope.

Instead, the doctor hands you a pamphlet. “We can kill you if you’d like. It’s legal now.”

You never thought about it. But now someone in authority, someone you trust, is suggesting maybe your life isn’t worth continuing.

That’s not offering choice. That’s planting a seed.

Strong people might push back. But we’re not talking about strong people. We’re talking about vulnerable people at the worst moment of their lives.

Think about women especially. Women who’ve spent their lives caring for others, always willing to sacrifice, always putting others first. When they get sick and seek medical help, they’re now told by authority figures that maybe their life isn’t worth living.

That’s what Mary-Anne Thomas has enabled.

The Waiting Period That Matters

The amendments also cut the waiting period from nine days to five.

Four days. That’s the difference between a patient having time to reconsider and a quick spiral after receiving that psychological blow.

Research shows these timeframes matter. When California shortened its waiting period to 48 hours, prescriptions for lethal medication jumped 47% in one year.

Older people in hospitals often don’t get visitors. They’re isolated. They’re depressed about that isolation. They’re feeling like a burden.

Then the doctor suggests death as an option. In five days, that suggestion can become reality.

Mary-Anne Thomas claims she’s helping vulnerable people. But these amendments do the opposite.

Who Benefits

Follow the incentives.

The medical industry benefits. Doctors get paid for the service. It’s faster and cheaper than ongoing palliative care.

Nursing homes benefit. They have financial arrangements that activate upon death.

And the system rewards those who don’t want to take care of people who’ve cared for them their whole lives. Lazy people who can’t be bothered doing the hard work of caring for someone in their time of need get an out. The doctor does the dirty work for them.

The law says two “independent” doctors must assess the patient. But independent from what, exactly?

Can both doctors work for the same clinic? Can one be employed by the nursing home where the patient lives? Can they have ongoing business relationships with institutions that benefit financially from the patient’s death?

These aren’t hypothetical concerns. Victorian clinicians surveyed before the original law expressed significant worry that vulnerable patients would be coerced to lessen the burden on families or the health system.

The Canadian Precedent

I keep mentioning Canada because they’re a few steps ahead of us. This is where Mary-Anne Thomas is leading Victoria.

First, it was terminal illness. Then mental illness. Then poverty.

Sean Tagert had Lou Gehrig’s disease. He needed 24-hour care but the government only funded 16 hours. The remaining eight hours cost him $263.50 per day.

He chose medically assisted death at 41, leaving behind an 11-year-old son. He called the alternative, institutionalisation, a “death sentence.”

Two women in Ontario with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities applied for assisted death after failing to find accessible housing. One said explicitly she applied “because of abject poverty.”

The UN Special Rapporteur visited Canada and expressed extreme concern. People with disabilities were requesting death not because they wanted to die, but because community support didn’t exist.

This is the trajectory under Mary-Anne Thomas’s leadership.

What Actually Changes

People already have the freedom to end their own lives. That’s always been true.

What changes when the state institutionalises it?

The difference is suggestion. Marketing. Authority figures telling vulnerable people that death is a dignified option.

The government is selling death. They’re making it sound painless, dignified, easy. They’re creating a sales pitch and requiring doctors to deliver it.

That’s not respecting autonomy. That’s disrespecting vulnerable people at their most desperate moment.

True dignity means knowing people want to care for you. That your life has value. That the medical system exists to help you live, not to kill you.

When a doctor suggests you might be better off dead, that’s the opposite of dignity.

The media barely covered these amendments. I searched. A handful of articles. Three pages of Google results for legislation that fundamentally changes the doctor-patient relationship.

The safeguards are disappearing one by one under Mary-Anne Thomas’s watch. The pattern is predictable. First they promise strong protections to get the bill passed. Then they water them down. Then they expand eligibility.

Mary-Anne Thomas has form. She’s been pushing this agenda since 2020, right beside Dan Andrews through it all. Every time there’s an opportunity to legislate more killing, she’s behind it.

But the media keeps her out of the spotlight. They talk about Jacinta Allen. They ignore the fact that Mary-Anne Thomas has been there the whole time, driving these policies.

It’s hard to imagine how people can vote for her when they don’t even know what she’s doing. While she pretends to care about vulnerable people, her actions tell a different story.

We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends.