Oregon SLAMMED for rising assisted suicide rates, with ‘death tourists’ adding to 431 tally in 2022

A record number of people took their lives in Oregon last year in America’s most advanced physician-assisted suicide program, allowing out-of-state “death tourists” to now get deadly drug cocktails on the West Coast.

Last year, 431 people received deadly 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 383 scripts and 238 deaths last year.

The 19-page report is Oregon’s first time recording nonresidents who traveled to end their lives on the West Coast, under last year’s controversial plan expansion.

Officially, three foreigners took their own lives in Oregon last year.

But officials say the true number could be much higher, as doctors are not required to record a patient’s residency status before writing their scripts.

Physician-assisted suicide is available in all three West Coast states. Pictured: Robert Fuller begins to put the drugs that will end his life into his feeding tube in Seattle, Washington

The new numbers come amid growing concerns that Oregon and other U.S. states are liberalizing their assisted suicide programs too quickly and following the lead of Canada, where tens of thousands of people are euthanized each year.

Lois Anderson, executive director of Oregon Right to Life, a campaign group, said doctors were increasingly writing lethal scripts for patients they had known for only a few days in some cases.

“The doctors who dispense 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 taken. That’s not a concern. That’s putting 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. By 2022, most people who took their own lives were white people over the age of 65 who suffered from cancer, heart disease or brain disease.

Supporters 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 sick, the disabled, and even those who have little money or feel burdened.

The Oregon report lists the reasons that drive people to end their lives.

Most of the scheme’s users said their condition made life “less enjoyable,” that they “lost autonomy” or “loss of dignity”—which is often the result of no longer being able to clean for themselves or for others. to take care of himself.

Only about a third of beneficiaries said they were concerned about a lack of “pain relief.” A worrying 17 patients said they took their own lives because they were worried about mounting medical bills.

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 that they then self-administered, usually at home.

Last year, it became the first U.S. state to allow nonresidents to travel to the West Coast state to end their lives.

Only about a third of beneficiaries said they were concerned about a lack of “pain relief.” A worrying 17 patients said they took their own lives because they were worried about mounting medical bills.

An example of the drugs doctors use to end lives in Belgium, which has one of the world’s most developed euthanasia programs

Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide program has been controversial from the start. Pictured: Demonstrators from both sides of the debate outside the Washington Supreme Court steps in 2005

This came about because Dr. Nicholas Gideonse sued Oregon in 2021, challenging the constitutionality of DWDA’s residency restriction, with support from Compassion & Choices, which leads the US campaign to expand access to assisted suicide.

Dr. Nicholas Gideonse, a proponent of “mushroom therapy,” has urged Oregon to let terminally ill non-residents come and end their lives

Oregon’s health chiefs settled the case in 2022 and agreed to lift the residency rule, but the state legislature only began to consider repealing this session through House Bill 2279, which is expected to pass in the Democratic-led chamber.

Dr. Gideonse publicly acknowledged last year that he had begun accepting out-of-state end-of-life patients in Oregon, including a Texas man suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease and an East Coast hospice patient

It is not clear whether Dr. Gideonse’s patients were among the three patients identified in the report.

Out-of-state residents must be able to spend at least 15 days in Oregon to process paperwork, which requires signatures from two doctors and witnesses, before self-administering the lethal dose, the clinic’s website said.

Dr. Gideonse and the center he directs, End of Life Choices Oregon, did not respond to DailyMail.com’s requests for comment. Oregon Health & Science University, where he also works, would not confirm whether it allows assisted suicide for outsiders.

America’s first “death tourism” destination raises tough legal questions for family members who can help a loved one make it to Oregon from a prohibitionist state. As a result, they may be arrested or even prosecuted in their home country.

DailyMail.com asked the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, whether it was investigating the Texan’s case. A spokesman said they are “unable to 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 have allowed people with as few as hearing loss are euthanized.

End of Life Choices Oregon website explains how terminally ill people living in states that ban or don’t support assisted suicide could benefit from a change in Oregon rule