Posted on 03/18/2008 4:22:22 PM PDT by wagglebee
Salem OR (LifeNews.com) -- Oregon officials have released their tenth statewide report on the status of assisted suicide there and it found the number of people who died is on the rise. The report also showed the number of people getting drugs to use in taking their own lives is increasing as well.
More people received lethal drugs from doctors to kill themselves than any previous year under the state's first-in-the-nation law legalizing assisted suicide.
The report showed 85 people received the drugs (an increase of 20 from the year prior) while 49 people had their physicians help them kill themselves (up slightly from 2007).
Three of the people who killed themselves in 2007 receive the prescription for the lethal cocktail in 2006.
Since the Oregon assisted suicide law took effect, 341 patients have killed themselves.
One leading euthanasia opponent, Rita Marker, of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, said she's concerned doctors don't do more to help patients address the mental health issues that likely prompt them to consider suicide.
"During 2007, not one patient who died under Oregon's assisted suicide law was referred for psychiatric or psychological evaluation before receiving the prescription for lethal drugs," she said.
Despite the apparent exactness of the figures, Marker told LifeNews.com she has no idea whether the information in the report is accurate or can be trusted. Marker said she relies on comments from state officials in previous years.
We don't really know if they are accurate or complete," she said of the new assisted suicide records. "And we are not the only ones that are saying we don't know if they are accurate or complete."
"The very first report official report that was issued on the assisted suicide law in Oregon said -- and these are their words -- 'We have no way of knowing if the information is accurate or complete,'" Marker said.
"They also said -- and these are their words -- 'everything could be a cock and bull story.' And they went on to say, 'but we only assume that doctors are being their usual, careful, accurate selves,'" Marker added.
Related web sites:
International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide - http://www.internationaltaskforce.org
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I’m ashamed of living 30 miles from that state.
The afterlife consequence of taking one’s live, or assisting another, is not pleasant and is rather timeless.
How many people died in Oregon in one vehicle accidents hitting a tree in the same period?
What does that have to do with anything?
Why can’t Oregonians just jump off a bridge or stick the barrel of a revolver into their mouth like normal people?
Way too many and their lethal cocktail was legal.
I live here in Oregon.
Believe me no lines are forming at the pharmacies for suicide cocktails.
Folks are lining up for the stay alive longer meds.
This is so sickening.
Watch there. Some of us Oregonians are OK!
Because just like homosexuals they want us to okay their immoral actions, if is legal it must be okay.
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Oregon Ping List.
No offense intended.
LOL! It’s so encouraging to see the color of Oregon change slowly from that dark blue to a lighter blue. More Republicans are here, and I really don’t know where they are from, but it’s great!
It’s time to clarify what the definition of ‘doctor’ is.
Killing isn’t medicine.
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