Associated Press report in Oregonlive.com:

The number of Oregonians who used the state’s assisted suicide law rose to its highest level in 2007, its tenth year in effect.

According to a report released Tuesday by the Oregon Department of Human Services, more people are getting the lethal prescriptions allowed under the Death with Dignity Act, but as in the past, not all take them.

The report shows that 85 people got the prescriptions in 2007, up by 20 from the year before. And 49 people died under the terms of the law, up by three from the year before.

Oregon’s law allows terminally ill, mentally competent adults to give themselves a life-ending medication prescribed by a physician. Oregon is the only state in the nation with such a law.

From the Oakland [MI] Press and the Associated Press:

Jack Kevorkian, released from prison last year after serving eight years for second-degree murder, picked up petitions to run for Congress from Michigan’s 9th District.

A retired pathologist, Kevorkian claims to have assisted in the suicides of at least 130 people from 1990 until 1998. Kevorkian, 79, was convicted in the death of Thomas Youk, which he filmed and had broadcast on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

“We need some honesty and sincerity instead of corrupt government in Washington,” Kevorkian said.

(more…)

By Ranjana Srivastava in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (registration required): A first-person piece about a doctor’s encounter with a terminal cancer patient who asks for help in planning her death. The interaction is disturbing for the doctor precisely because she finds the patient’s request so reasonable.

I am stunned by her cold logic yet captivated by its lucidity. She is thinking aloud what has crossed the minds of anyone, physician or patient, who has witnessed the trail of emotional and physical destruction that a terminal illness often lays down.

(more…)

Cover story by Daniel Bergner in the New York Times Magazine: (login required)

Cover headline: Booth Gardner is a 71-year-old former governor of Washington State running one last campaign: To let people — including someday people like him, with Parkinson’s or other debilitating nonterminal diseases — take their own lives. The next assisted suicide could be even more morally fraught.

His son is among those fighting him every step of the way.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, James Ricci documents the work of disability rights activists in defeating medically assisted suicide legislation in California. This work is portrayed as conflicting with the constituency’s traditional support for “personal choice and civil rights.”

Many disability rights activists contend that the increasingly cost-conscious healthcare system, especially health maintenance organizations, inevitably would respond to legalized suicide by withholding expensive care from the disabled and terminally ill until they chose to end their lives.

“HMOs are denying access to healthcare and hastening people’s deaths already,” said Paul Longmore, a history professor at San Francisco State and a pioneer in the historical study of disability. “Our concern is not just how this will affect us. Given the way the U.S. healthcare system is getting increasingly unjust and even savage, I don’t think this system could be trusted to implement such a system equitably, or confine it to people who are immediately terminally ill.”

The story examines the coalitions that are being built between disability rights activists, religious groups and medical associations.

There’s a problem with the headline: Assisted suicide attacked from an unlikely front. It’s only unlikely if you haven’t been paying attention. Two more demerits for using words like “afflicted” and “stricken.”

Jack Kevorkian, shown in 1991 with his “suicide machine.”
AP photo from New York Times.

A scheduled speaking engagement by Jack Kevorkian at the University of Florida is drawing protests from critics of euthanasia. Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo, is organizing a petition drive seeking to get UF to withdraw its invitation to the man who has been called Doctor Death.

“The scheduled Oct. 11 appearance at UF will likely be his first paid public speaking engagement since his June 1 release from prison, according to his attorney. Kevorkian served eight years for second-degree murder in the poisoning of a man who had Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

Other recent coverage of Kevorkian includes:

– An interview in the New York Times after his release from prison.

“But eight years behind bars and a strict list of promises to gain parole have done nothing to mellow the blunt, passionate, combative advocate for physician-assisted suicide. “

– An interview by Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom.

“After an hour, I knew I wouldn’t want to go via Jack Kevorkian, a man for whom the world is bleak, happiness is rare, belief is a waste of time and life is a finite, meaningless entity. The act he champions may indeed be one of compassion, but how can it be delivered by such a cold, cold heart?”

– A column in the Boston Globe, “Helping my Father Die,” by Darshak Sanghavi.

“Dr. Jack Kevorkian was never an attractive poster child for dignified and comfortable deaths for the terminally ill. That’s too bad, because Kevorkian was on to something important.”