CNS STORY: Ten years later, Oregon's is only U.S. law allowing assisted suicide

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PEW-OREGON Oct-12-2007 (750 words) xxxn

Ten years later, Oregon's is only U.S. law allowing assisted suicide

By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Ten years after Oregon adopted the nation's first bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide, no other state has passed a similar law, despite attempts by several legislatures or voter initiatives.

But both supporters and opponents of the Death With Dignity Act predicted efforts to pass such laws will continue, especially as more aging baby boomers deal with fatal diseases.

The Death With Dignity Act allows terminally ill people to obtain lethal doses of prescription drugs from their doctors to self-administer. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 upheld lower court rulings that said the law is constitutional, sidelining an attempt by the U.S. attorney general to use drug-control laws to prosecute physicians who prescribe lethal doses of federally controlled drugs.

Dr. Leon Kass, former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said at an Oct. 10 forum in Washington marking the law's anniversary that pressure to pass more such laws will escalate as more baby boomers pass age 65.

Barbara Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a hybrid of two organizations that pushed to pass the Oregon law, said efforts to pass similar laws in other states were blocked by some of the "largest, most powerful social organizations in the world," and acknowledged that the "political and lobbying forces against it are enormous."

Kass said the "forces who rally on this subject understand the problem." The American Medical Association, disability rights groups and numerous religious organizations, especially the Catholic Church, have been at the forefront of opposition to assisted-suicide laws.

But "pressures to pass this are coming. We're going to have more people pushing for it," he said.

The anniversary event was hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Oregon's Department of Human Services statistics through the end of 2006 show 292 people died after ingesting a lethal dose of medication prescribed under the law's provisions. Of those, the vast majority suffered from various types of cancer and were in hospice care. The median age was 70.

The number of people seeking lethal doses of drugs under the law has grown steadily, from 21 the first year to 65 in 2006, although there was a one-year drop in the increase in 2004, from 67 the previous year to 60. Over the nine years reported so far, an average of 33 percent did not use their drugs, dying instead of natural causes.

Kass said such statistics fail to give an accurate picture of the circumstances of the people who seek lethal doses of drugs for themselves. The state relies on doctors to report their own cases, with no provision for independent interviews with patients, their families or the nurses who are by their bedsides, he said.

Although the law says patients should be free of depression, there's no requirement that they be evaluated or treated for depression or that they receive adequate palliative medication for pain before the decision to seek lethal drugs is accepted, said Kass.

"I don't know why advocates for this don't make sure there isn't depression," he said.

"Sixty (percent) to 70 percent of people at this point of their life are depressed," and could be treated for depression to improve the quality of their last weeks and months, he added.

Lee and Kass again and again cited the experience with physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands, where it has been legal since 1993, and was a common practice long before that. Kass argued that the Dutch experience shows an increase in euthanasia as well as in physician-assisted suicide, evidence of a "slippery slope" of shifting ethical standards.

Although she cited the Dutch system favorably at other points, Lee said in some ways the country is "a poor model for the Untied States. We are not the Dutch. The Dutch tolerate behavior we would not. They tolerated outright euthanasia for years."

But she said under Oregon's law the decision about whether and when to take lethal drugs "never leaves the patient," eliminating the risk that family members or doctors will end someone's life for them.

Kass said the high number of Americans without health insurance makes the risk of physician-assisted suicide more worrisome.

He recalled that during a radio debate about an assisted-suicide law the high cost of medical care and its burden on the sick and their families came up again and again.

"We shouldn't be Pollyannaish about where this country is," he said.

END

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