Decade of Data
Background
Since 1997, Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act has enabled terminally ill people to have the option of a compassionate, pain-free death. Death with Dignity must go hand in hand with the best end-of-life options: the implementation of advance directives and the improvement in availability of palliative and hospice care.
The Oregon act works
Sound clips from George Eighmey’s March speaking tour in Vermont:
- George Eighmey in response to the question of why Oregonians voted for their law
- David Babbot on experiences of death, choice, and diversity of opinion
- David Babbot explains the difference between patient-directed dying and euthanasia
- George Eighmey on protecting the vulnerable
- George Eighmey on improvement in doctor-patient relationships and palliative care
- George Eighmey tells the stories of a few patients at the end
- PCV Board Member Diana Barnard, MD, on why she supports the bill as a physician
Read a 2007 statement from Oregon Advocacy Center Executive Director Robert Joodeph about the bill’s effect on Oregonians with disabilities.
Read “Experiences of Oregon Nurses and Social Workers with Hospice Patients Who Requested Assistance with Suicide” (2002) from the New England Journal of Medicine (or download)
Read Oregon’s Law Withstands the Test of Time, by George Eighmey
In Oregon, where the act took effect in 1997, the annual reports from the Department of Human Services show that the law is working as intended. In the first eleven years of the Act:
- Every patient who has used the Oregon law has had some form of health insurance.
- In Oregon, no disabled person has used the Death With Dignity Act unless they were terminally ill.
- 84% of patients using the law in Oregon were cancer patients.
- The next-most common underlying disease was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
- Most of the patients using the Oregon law had a college education.
- The median age of patients using the Oregon law was mid- to late 60’s.
- Since 1997, approximately 1 in 1000 terminally ill patients in Oregon received and used the medication.
- In the 2008 report, 98% were enrolled in hospice care. (In Vermont, hospice services are available in all communities, but referrals are between 25% and 30%.)
Oregon’s most recent annual report on the legislation is from 2010. View it here, or download a summary here. View a blog post from the Death with Dignity National Center here. View the numbers up to 2009 broken down by year here.
Read the report “Quality of Death and Dying in Patients who Request Physician-Assisted Death” from the Journal of Palliative Medicine. From the report conclusions: “The quality of death experienced by those who received lethal prescriptions is no worse than those not pursuing PAD, and in some areas it is rated by family members as better.”
View The Oregon Death with Dignity Act: Six Years of Data (Or download as PDF)
In addition, Oregon physicians report that since the passage of this law in 1997, they have made efforts to improve their knowledge of the use of pain medications, to improve their recognition of psychiatric disorders such as depression, and to refer patients more frequently to hospice.
Oregon’s Death with Dignity law and Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Factual Disputes (2004)
Legislative Council Study
In the closing days of the 2004 Vermont legislative session, 78 representatives, a majority, requested the Legislative Council to study the facts of the Oregon Death with Dignity experience and to report its findings to the legislature by the start of the next session. They concluded that it operates without abuse and in all likelihood it enhances care at the end of life.
