by
Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 31, 2008
Salem,
OR (LifeNews.com) -- The head of the statewide pro-life group Oregon
Right to Life is challenging the Eugene Register Guard newspaper over
its presentation of the state's new report on assisted suicide. The
new report found the number of people who died is on the rise and
showed the number of patients getting drugs to use in taking their own
lives also increasing.
The newspaper issued a recent editorial saying “physician assisted death ... is a conscious, deliberate choice made by mentally sound individuals."
But ORTL's executive director Gayle Atteberry says that claim "flies in the face of all reality."
"It is a substantiated fact that clinical depression is the number one cause of suicide," she explains. "Yet last year, not one single patient seeking to end his or her life by means of the assisted suicide law was referred to a professional counselor because of depression."
"Contrary to The Register-Guard’s editorial ... the Oregon Health Department’s recent release of the 2007 report concerning Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act proves one thing: Oregon’s assisted suicide experiment does not work as voters were led to believe it would," she added.
Atteberry says there are already two cases of mentally incapable patients getting lethal cocktails and she pointed to a survey showing Oregon physicians saying they are not able to identify when patients are mentally unable to qualify for an assisted suicide.
Dr. Linda Ganzini, professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, surveyed family members of 83 Oregon patients who requested assisted suicide, Atteberry notes.
It found not one patient put their physical pain at higher than a two on a scale of one to five.
"In most cases, future concerns about physical symptoms were rated as more important than physical symptoms present at the time of the request," Ganzini said in the February 2008 Journal of General Internal Medicine study.
As a result, Atteberry says the state shows pain or fear of pain continues to be the least-used reason given for an assisted suicide.
"Supporters of assisted suicide long have maintained that assisted suicide is necessary for those suffering from intractable pain; however, there has been no documented case of assisted suicide being used for untreatable pain," she says.
"Ganzini’s study confirms that instead of having their fears and concerns ministered to, many patients are being abandoned at their critical time of need and left to indulge their fears by succumbing to a needless suicide," she adds in the rebuttal op-ed.
Atteberry says proponents of assisted suicide point to statistics showing just three more people killing themselves last year compared with the year before.
But she calls that a "misleading picture" of assisted suicide in Oregon because last year's figures are three times higher than those in 1997. The number of lethal prescriptions written also has skyrocketed.
Atteberry concludes, "The facts are now conclusive: Oregon’s assisted suicide experiment has failed the very patients it was intended to serve."
Related
web sites:
Oregon Right to Life - http://www.ortl.org
