The article below appeared in the online edition of the Montana newspaper, The Missoulian, on December 31, 2012(http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/oregon-washington-assisted-suicide-laws-include-no-protections-for-patients/article_074c4378-507b-11e2-8348-001a4bcf887a.html).
Thanks again to Washington attorney Margaret Dore.
With regard to the two intemperate comments: remember that Ms. Dore’s entire point is that the Oregon and Washington laws provide absolutely no means of knowing whether patients are being murdered or not. One can debate whether the request process is adequate to determine competency and intent. True Dignity does not believe it is adequate to protect against pressure, and in fact believes that assisted suicide laws are inherently pressuring, especially in a time when medical cost-cutting is the medical issue du jour. Even if the request process were entirely free, however, the fact that the Oregon and Washington laws, and all laws proposed in the US, require no witnesses at the time of death, makes such laws extremely dangerous.
Proponents like to tell us that many patients requesting the lethal dose never take it. Of those who do commit assisted suicide, however, we will never know if any have been forced. Making a formal, public request for assistance in suicide and filling the prescription so that the drugs are in the house, is like putting a sign around one’s neck advertising that one’s murder would go uninvestigated, undetected, and unpunished.
No one can say with any confidence that the Washington and Oregon laws have never been abused, that they have never led to murder.
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December 31, 2012 6:15 am • ONLINE-ONLY letter to the editor
(2) Comments
Re: Susan Hancock, “Death with Dignity is about giving people choices” (Dec. 20, guest column):
I disagree with Susan Hancock’s description of how the Washington and Oregon assisted suicide laws work. I disagree that assisted suicide cannot be forced upon an unwilling person.
The Oregon and Washington assisted suicide acts have a formal application process. The acts allow an heir, who will benefit from the patient’s death, to actively participate in this process.
Once the lethal dose is issued by the pharmacy, there is no oversight. For example, there is no witness required at the death. Without disinterested witnesses, the opportunity is created for an heir, or for another person who will benefit from the patient’s death, to administer the lethal dose to the patient without his consent. One method would be by injection when the patient is sleeping. The drugs used in Oregon and Washington are water soluble and therefore injectable. If the patient woke up and struggled, who would know?
The Washington and Oregon acts require the state health departments to collect statistical information for the purpose of annual reports. According to these reports, users of assisted-suicide are overwhelmingly white and generally well-educated. Many have private insurance. Most are age 65 and older. Typically persons with these attributes are seniors with money, which would be the middle class and above, a group disproportionately at risk of financial abuse and exploitation.
The forms used to collect the statistical information do not ask about abuse. Moreover, not even law enforcement is allowed to access information about a particular case. Alicia Parkman a mortality research analyst at the Center for Health Statistics, Oregon Health Authority, wrote me: “We have been contacted by law enforcement and legal representatives in the past, but have not provided identifying information of any type.“
Assisted suicide in Washington and Oregon is a recipe for elder abuse and cloaked in secrecy. Don’t make our mistake.
Margaret Dore,
Seattle, Wash.