Comment & Debate
Susan Okie, M.D., “Physician-Assisted Suicide – Oregon and Beyond”. New England Journal of Medicine. April 21, 2005 – “The [Oregon assisted suicide] law has not had the the dire social consequences that some opponents predicted. There is no evidence that it has been used to coerce elderly, poor, or depressed patients to end their lives, nor has it caused any significant migration of terminally ill people to Oregon. As compared with Oregonians who died naturally from similar diseases in 2004, those who died by means of physician-assisted suicide tended to be younger (median age, 64 vs 76 years).”[1]