Conclusions: Where assisted dying is already legal, there is no current evidence for the claim that legalised PAS or euthanasia will have disproportionate impact on patients in vulnerable groups. Those who received physician-assisted dying in the jurisdictions studied appeared to enjoy comparative social, economic, educational, professional and other privileges.
Physician assisted death (both voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide) has been openly practised in the Netherlands for more than 25 years and formally legalised since 2002. The practice has been analysed in four major national studies between 1990 and 2007.1 2 A more restricted form of physician assisted death (physician assisted suicide only) was legalised in Oregon in 1997 and is the subject of an annual report. Although these studies do little to resolve the moral and religious questions surrounding these practices, they do answer the following questions about the risks and benefits of legalisation.
On October 27, 1997 Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act which allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act requires the Oregon Department of Human Services to collect information about the patients and physicians who participate in the Act, and publish an annual statistical report.
Proponents for the legalization of physician assisted suicide (PAS ) argue that it has been legal in Oregon since 1997 and that it works well. They maintain that palliative and hospice care can co-exist comfortably with the option for PAS. My aim was to examine these claims, in two cities in the Northwest of America; Seattle where there is no legalized PAS and Portland where PAS is legal.
Physician assisted suicide has been legal for a decade in the US state of Oregon. But palliative care specialist David Jeffrey says there are grave questions about whether people are being helped to die, when treatment for depression could be a highly successful alternative. In this week's Scrubbing Up column Dr Jeffrey, who is based at the University of Edinburgh, says a patient should be free to end their life - but doctors should not be involved.
Ganzini and colleagues’ finding that 3 of the 18 Oregonians who received a prescription for a lethal drug met caseness criteria for depression raises concerns about the state’s Death with Dignity Act, which demands a psychiatric review only if "concern exists that the patient has a psychiatric disorder." We know that depression is common in the terminally ill and that depression may be successfully treated in this population. We know that depression may impair a person’s capacity when requesting physician assisted suicide, and we know that non-psychiatrically trained physicians are poor at detecting depression. We also know that these four facts are true for delirium in patients who are terminally ill. There is a strong argument for including mandatory psychiatric review in any legislation that enables physician assisted death, to detect and protect those who would not have requested assistance to die had they not been depressed or delirious.
Proponents of assisted suicide believe support for legalisation is growing among lawmakers and the public around the world. In the past year three names have been added to the list of places which permit it. The BBC's Vincent Dowd investigates whether assisted suicide is set to become even more common.
Marlisa Tiedemann Dominique Valiquet Law and Government Division Revised 17 July 2008 PRB 07-03E PARLIAMENTARY INFORMATION AND RESEARCH SERVICE SERVICE D’INFORMATION ET DE RECHERCHEPARLEMENTAIRES
A public policy think tank, which aims to promote “rational, evidence-based and measured debate” on the subject of assisted dying, has been launched by two members of the House of Lords. Lord Alex Carlile and Baroness Ilora Finlay, co-chairs of Living and Dying Well, have both fervently opposed any change in the law on this issue. Their new organisation is neither “neutral” nor “a campaigning pressure group,” instead, they want to present “hard evidence” to parliament and the public in an objective and informative manner.