A record number of people ended their lives in Oregon last year under America’s most advanced physician-assisted suicide program, which now allows “death tourists” to out of state to get deadly drug cocktails on the west coast.
Last year, 431 people received lethal prescriptions under the state’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), and 278 people used them to end their lives, the Oregon Health Authority said in its Annual Report.
That’s a jump from the 383 scripts and 238 deaths the previous year.
The 19-page report is the first time Oregon has recorded nonresidents who traveled to end their lives on the West Coast, as part of the program’s controversial expansion last year.
Officially, three out-of-staters ended their lives in Oregon last year.
But officials say the real number could be much higher because doctors don’t have to record a patient’s residency status before inking their scripts.
Last year, 431 people received lethal orders under the state’s Death with Dignity Act (DWDA), and 278 people used them to end their lives.
Physician assisted suicide programs are available in all three West Coast states. Pictured: Robert Fuller begins plunging the drugs that will end his life into his feeding tube in Seattle, Washington
The new figures come amid growing concerns in Oregon and other U.S. states that they are liberalizing their assisted suicide programs too quickly and following Canada’s lead, where tens of thousands of people are euthanized every year.
Lois Anderson, executive director of Oregon Right to Life, a campaign group, said doctors were increasingly writing life-threatening scripts for patients they had known in some cases for just days.
“The doctors who provide these deadly prescriptions barely know their patients and often abandon them in the last moments of their lives,” Anderson said.
“They are increasingly absent even when the deadly drugs are ingested. It’s not care. It pushes people through the “Death with Dignity” machine.
Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Program is available to adults who have a terminal illness and have less than six months to live. In 2022, most of those who ended their lives were white people over the age of 65 with cancer, heart disease or brain disease.
Proponents of assisted suicide programs say they help some desperately ill people end their suffering. Critics say they devalue human life and make death a solution for the crippled, handicapped and even those who are short of money or feel like a burden.
The Oregon report lists the reasons people end their lives.
Most users of the program said that their condition made life “less pleasant”, that they “lost their autonomy” or that they suffered from a “loss of dignity” – which is often the result of no longer to be able to clean or take care of oneself.
Only around a third of recipients said they worried about a lack of ‘pain control’. 17 worrying patients said they were ending their lives because they feared medical bills would pile up.
Oregon became the first U.S. state to allow physician-assisted suicide in 1997, allowing terminally ill adult Oregonians with less than six months to live to ask doctors for a lethal dose of drugs they take. then administer, usually at home.
Last year it became the first US state to allow non-residents to travel to the West Coast state to end their lives.
Only around a third of recipients said they worried about a lack of ‘pain control’. 17 worrying patients said they were ending their lives because they feared medical bills would pile up.
An example of the drugs used by doctors to end lives in Belgium, which has one of the most developed euthanasia programs in the world
Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide program has been controversial from the start. Pictured: Protesters from both sides of the debate outside the Supreme Court steps in Washington in 2005
This was done by Dr Nicholas Gideonse in 2021 suing Oregon, challenging the constitutionality of the DWDA’s residency restriction, with support from Compassion & Choices, which leads the US campaign to expand access to assisted suicide.
‘Magic mushroom’ therapy proponent Dr. Nicholas Gideonse lobbied for Oregon to let terminally ill non-residents come and end their lives
Oregon’s 2022 health chiefs settled the case and agreed to lift the residency rule, but the state legislature only began considering repeal this session through the bill. Bill 2279, which is expected to pass the Democratic-led House.
Last year, Dr Gideonse publicly acknowledged that he had begun accepting out-of-state patients wishing to end their lives in Oregon, including a Texas-based man with the disease of Lou Gehrig and a patient hospitalized on the east coast.
It is unclear 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 approval from two doctors and witnesses, before administering the lethal dose themselves, says the clinic’s website.
Dr. Gideonse and the center he directs, End of Life Choices Oregon, did not respond to DailyMail.com’s requests for comment. Oregon Health and Science University, where he also works, has not confirmed whether it facilitates assisted suicides for non-states.
America’s first ‘death tourism’ destination raises difficult legal questions for family members who could help a loved one reach Oregon from a prohibitionist state. As a result, they could be arrested or even prosecuted in their home country.
DailyMail.com asked the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, if they were investigating the Texas resident’s case. A spokesperson said they were “unable to provide comment at this time”.
For critics, Oregon’s burgeoning ‘death tourism’ industry and efforts to create another in Vermont show how the US is on a slippery slope to follow in Canada’s footsteps – where lax rules allowed people with so little hearing loss to be euthanized.
The End of Life Choices Oregon website explains how terminally ill people living in states that ban or don’t support assisted suicides can benefit from a change in Oregon’s rule
