Doctor-aided suicide: No slippery slope(oming incompetent or are perceived to be...),Health

Battins team analyzed data on assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia in the Netherlands during 1985-2005 data taken from four government studies and several smaller ones. They analyzed Oregon Department of Human Services annual reports for 1998-2006, and surveys of physicians and hospice professionals.

The findings fell into three categories, based on the strength of the data. The researchers found:

• Direct evidence that elderly people, women and uninsured people do not die in disproportionate numbers where physician-assisted death is legal, but AIDS patients do. (The insurance data is from Oregon only; everyone is insured in the Netherlands.)

• Evidence that is partly direct and partly inferred showing that physician-assisted death does not kill disproportionate numbers of people who are poor, uneducated, racial and ethnic minorities, minors, or people with chronic physical or mental disabilities or chronic but not terminal illnesses.

• Evidence that is based on inference or that is partly contested showing that people with psychiatric illness including depression and Alzheimers disease are not likely to die in lopsided numbers.

Those who received physician-assisted dying appeared to enjoy comparative social, economic, educational, professional and other privileges, the researchers write.

The researchers noted that in both Oregon and the Netherlands, people who received a doctors help in dying averaged 70 years old, and 80 percent were cancer patients.

As for AIDS, during nine years of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, only six patients with the disease died with physician assistance 2 percent of all deaths under the law. Yet, the researchers write, persons with AIDS were 30 times more likely to use assis
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