Record numbers of people ended their lives in Oregon last year in America’s most advanced doctor-assisted suicide program, which now lets out-of-state ‘death tourists’ get lethal drug cocktails on the West Coast.
Last year, 431 people received fatal prescriptions under the state’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), and 278 people used them to end their lives, Oregon Health Authority said in its annual report.
That’s a jump from 383 scripts and 238 deaths the previous year.
The 19-page report is the first time Oregon has recorded the non-residents who travelled to end their lives on the West Coast, under last year’s controversial expansion of the scheme.
Officially, three out-of-staters ended their lives in Oregon last year.
But officials say the real number could be much higher, as doctors do not have to record a patients’ residency status before inking their scripts.
Last year, 431 people received fatal prescriptions under the state’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), and 278 people used them to end their lives
Doctor-assisted suicide schemes are available in all three West Coast states. Pictured: Robert Fuller begins to plunge the drugs that will end his life into his feeding tube in Seattle, Washington
The new numbers come amid growing concerns that Oregon and other US states are liberalizing their assisted-suicide programs too quickly and following the example of Canada, where 10,064 people were euthanized in 2021.
Lois Anderson, executive director of Oregon Right to Life, a campaign group, said doctors were increasingly writing fatal scripts for patients they had known in some cases for only a few days.
‘The physicians providing these deadly prescriptions hardly know their patients and are often abandoning them in the last moments of their lives,’ said Anderson.
‘They have increasingly become absent even when the lethal drugs are ingested. That’s not care. That’s churning people through the ‘Death with Dignity’ machine.’
Oregon’s assisted suicide program is available to adults who have a terminal illness and less than six months to live. In 2022, most of those who ended their lives were white people aged over 65 suffering from cancer, heart disease or brain disease.
Supporters of assisted suicide schemes say they help some desperately sick people end their suffering. Critics say they devalue human life and make death a solution for the infirm, disabled and even those who are cash-strapped or feel like a burden.
Oregon’s report lists the reasons driving people to end their lives.
Most of the scheme’s users said their condition was making life ‘less enjoyable,’ that they were ‘losing autonomy’ or suffering a ‘loss of dignity’ — which is often the result of no longer being able to clean or care for oneself.
Only about a third of beneficiaries said they were worried about a lack of ‘pain control.’ A worrying 17 patients said they were ending their lives because they were worried about medical bills piling up.
Oregon became the first US state to allow physician-assisted suicide in 1997, allowing terminally ill adult Oregonians, with less than six months left to live, to ask doctors for a fatal dose of drugs they then administer themselves, typically at home.
Last year, it became the first US state to move to allow non-residents to travel to the West Coast state to end their lives.
Only about a third of beneficiaries said they were worried about a lack of ‘pain control.’ A worrying 17 patients said they were ending their lives because they were worried about medical bills piling up.
An example of the drugs used by doctors to end lives in Belgium, which has one of the world’s most developed euthanasia programs
Oregon’s doctor-assisted suicide program has been controversial since the outset. Pictured: Demonstrators from both sides of the debate outside the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington in 2005
That came about by Dr Nicholas Gideonse in 2021 suing Oregon, challenging the constitutionality of DWDA’s residency restriction, with support from Compassion & Choices, which leads the US campaign to expand access to assisted suicide.
Dr Nicholas Gideonse, an advocate of ‘magic mushroom’ therapy, has pushed for Oregon to let terminally ill non-residents come and end their lives
Oregon health chiefs in 2022 settled the case and agreed to lift the residency rule, but the state’s legislature only began considering the repeal this session through House Bill 2279, which looks set to pass in the Democrat-led chamber.
Dr Gideonse last year publicly acknowledged that he had started accepting out-of-state patients wishing to end their lives in Oregon, including a Texas-based man suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease and a hospice patient on the East Coast
It’s not clear whether Dr Gideonse’s patients were among the three identified in the report.
Out-of-state residents must be able to spend at least 15 days in Oregon to process the paperwork, which requires sign-offs from two doctors and witnesses, before administering the fatal dose themselves, says the clinic’s website.
Dr Gideonse and the center he directs, End of Life Choices Oregon, did not answer DailyMail.com’s requests for comment. Oregon Health & Science University, where he also works, would not confirm whether it facilitated assisted suicides for out-of-staters.
America’s first ‘death tourism’ destination throws up tough legal questions for family members who may help a loved one reach Oregon from a prohibitionist state. They could face arrest or even be prosecuted in their home state as a result.
DailyMail.com asked the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, whether it was investigating the case of the Texan resident. A spokesperson said they were ‘unable to provide a comment at this time.’
For critics, Oregon’s nascent ‘death tourism’ industry, and efforts to create another in Vermont, show how the US is on a slippery slope to following in Canada’s footsteps — where lax rules have allowed people with so little as hearing loss to be euthanized.
The website of End of Life Choices Oregon explains how the terminally ill living in states that outlaw or do not support assisted suicides can take advantage of a change in Oregon’s rule
