Fed: Few take up option to terminate life US study

AAP General News (Australia)
04-01-2001
Fed: Few take up option to terminate life US study

BRISBANE, April 1 AAP - Relatively few terminally ill people use medication to end
their own lives even where "physician-assisted suicide" is legal, a study shows.

In the three years since doctors in the state of Oregon in the United States have been
allowed to prescribe lethal doses of drugs, only 70 people have taken up the option, researcher
Howard Wineberg found.

In an article in the Medical Journal of Australia, Dr Wineberg said this represented
two people per month using physician-assisted suicide (PAS) compared to the 545 people
per month who die of cancer.

Under Oregon law, patients must self-administer the oral medication, and euthanasia,
in which doctors actively intervene, is banned.

Dr Wineberg said the perseverance required to fulfill legal requirements before patients
could be handed the drugs, including a 15-day cooling off period, made it difficult for
patients to die "on a whim".

Few physicians agree to prescribe under the system, with the Oregon Health Division
reporting only a fifth would do so if asked.

Dr Wineberg said improvements in palliative care may be allowing people to die in relative
comfort, as about 45 per cent of the patients for whom a substantive intervention is made
will change their minds about suicide.

Oregon has one of the highest rates of morphine usage per capita in the US, he said.

Commenting on the study, area director of palliative care services for North Sydney,
Dr Deborah Campbell, said some patients who request help to suicide may be issuing a "cry
for help" for better palliative care.

The Oregon experience, as well as that in the Netherlands and the Northern Territory
demonstrated that the dilemmas facing doctors and legislators around euthanasia were "greater
than ever", she said.

"While public opinion polls have indicated progressively increasing support for 'the
right to die', the actual uptake of PAS, where available, does not support the cry for
its urgency," she said.

AAP rr/sc/ns/sb

KEYWORD: EUTHANASIA

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