Many Oregon doctors resist assisting suicides

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Law makes it legal, but few patients do it

March 22, 1999
Web posted at: 2:27 p.m. EST (1927 GMT)

In this story: Reputations at risk? Only willing to help their own patients Amendments considered RELATED STORIES, SITES

A total of 23 people have requested and received lethal prescriptions during that period. Of those, 15 have ended their lives in doctor-assisted suicides.

"I believed from the beginning that there would be a relatively small number that would use the law for suicide," Dr. Peter Rasmussen, a cancer specialist in Portland who took part in some of those assisted suicides, told CNN.

"But," he added, "a larger number of patients would take comfort in knowing it was available if they needed it."

Reputations at risk?

Eighmey says some Oregon physicians, especially those in small communities, worry about the stigma attached to assisted suicide

Many doctors seem to be having second thoughts, too. Before the law took effect, a survey of Oregon physicians found 46 percent of them would be willing to administer lethal medication if the law allowed it and a patient requested it.

In fact, however, few doctors outside of cities are willing to do it, according to George Eighmey, executive director of Compassion and Dying, an organization that has put terminally ill patients in touch with Oregon doctors willing to participate in assisted suicide.

"Their rationale is, 'I don't want to get a reputation. I don't want to participate because this is a small community,'" he told CNN. "In the Portland metro area you don't get that (reaction). In other areas you do."

Compassion and Dying keeps its offices near downtown Portland unmarked and some employees have received death threats, says Eighmey.

He draws a parallel between assisted suicides and abortions; while legal and morally right in the view of some Oregon doctors, those in smaller communities still won't perform them because they fear peer pressure, societal condemnation and loss of patients.

Only willing to help their own patients

Harvey supports the assisted suicide law, but says he would be reluctant to use it for anyone but his long-term patients

Six out of the 15 terminally ill people who used the law to end their lives last year were turned down by at least one doctor. And, by the state's own informal sampling, 67 percent of doctors who treat terminally ill patients said they would refuse to participate in an assisted suicide

Dr. Tom Harvey, a general practitioner near Portland, has refused both times he's been asked to help in an assisted suicide. Although he believes in the law, Harvey told CNN he would only participate for a long-time patient.

"(Doctors) who do believe in it, like me, just want to do it for those they know well and it's not a service we look forward to do. But I would reluctantly help one of my patients who felt it was the right choice," he said.

More than a year into the Oregon law, Rasmussen believes the state's voters can feel they made the right choice. "We haven't found those terrible complications that were predicted by some people opposed to assisted suicide," he said.

"The pattern we found is that patients very quickly become drowsy and fall asleep and die without any apparent discomfort."

Amendments considered

But opponents are pushing a dozen different amendments to the law in the Oregon Legislature.

One measure would bar the state's health plan from paying for an assisted suicide. Another would prohibit doctors from assisting a suicide on the property of a Catholic hospital.

One proposal would allow a "bona fide researcher" the right to access medical records, which, some doctors fear, might be leaked, leading to the harassment of both patients and doctors involved in assisted suicide.

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