No Slippery Slope: Physician-aided deaths are rare among those presumed vulnerable
By Brian Vastag
Over the past quarter-century, opponents of physician-assisted death have argued against the practice on the grounds that vulnerable groups—the very old, the poor, and the mentally ill, to name three—would turn to, or be pushed toward, such deaths in disproportionate numbers. A review of records from Oregon and the Netherlands undermines that argument.
Instead, people who receive help dying tend to be better educated and better off than the general population.
The review also finds that, in fact, few people in Oregon have died with a physician’s help. Since the practice became legal in 1997, only 292 people—of whom 85 percent were in hospice care—have chosen to end their lives with a lethal prescription. That number amounts to 0.15 percent of all deaths in the state.