Voluntary euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke says he will return to New Zealand to conduct workshops now that plans to prosecute him have been dropped.
In February, the New Zealand Ministry of Health investigated a complaint made by the Medical Council that Dr Nitschke was practising medicine without a licence. The Ministry now says there is insufficient evidence to support a prosecution.
Dr Nitschke says other lecturers on medical topics are not asked to register as doctors and the move was an attempt to censor him.
“There is an issue of free speech here,” he said.”There is an issue of access to free information and of course, fundamentally, what does constitute practising medicine?
“I mean, when talking to people about medical issues is defined in such a tight way, it really has the effect of imposing the dead hand of censorship on this whole end-of-life issue.”
