Oregon v. Ashcroft: The Battle over the Soul of Medicine

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN A. RICH
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
War Of Attrition ◽  
Dying Patients ◽  
Medical Disputes ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Death With Dignity Act ◽  
Dignity Act

When one considers the protracted and continuing struggle of the citizens of Oregon to include physician-assisted suicide (also known as “physician aid in dying”) among the panoply of measures available to dying patients and the physicians who care for them, the depth and breadth of the issue becomes inescapable. The potential intractability of the dispute is illustrated by the very fact, noted in the preceding parenthetical phrase, that consensus eludes us on even the most basic of semantic points—how we are to most aptly characterize the conduct in question? The case featured in this issue's The Caduceus in Court must be examined as the latest battle in a long war of attrition waged by opponents of physician-assisted suicide against the Oregon Death with Dignity Act (“the Oregon Act”). After briefly reviewing that history, I will then consider the details of Oregon v. Ashcroft and the implications of the litigation not only for the care of dying patients but also for the regulation of medical practice in the United States and, more broadly still, the search for resolution of serious medical disputes in a democratic society.

scholarly journals Are the Distinctions Drawn in the Debate about End-of-Life Decision Making “Principled”? If Not, How Much Does it Matter?

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yale Kamisar
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Good Death ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
Assisted Death ◽  
Dying Patients ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
End Of Life Decision ◽  
Life Decision

I sometimes wonder whether some proponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) or physician-assisted death (PAD) think they own the copyright to such catchy phrases as “death with dignity” and “a good death” so that if you are against PAS or PAD, then you must be against a dignified death or a good death. If one removes the quotation marks around phrases like “aid-in-dying” or “compassionate care for the dying,” I am not opposed to such end-of-life care either. Indeed, how could anybody be against this type of care?I do not want to abandon dying patients anymore than Dr. Timothy Quill does. Although, unfortunately, it will not always be easy to achieve the desired result, I agree with him that it ought to be a goal of medicine “to help people die well, to help them receive a good death” — or at least “the best possible” death under the circumstances. I part company with Professor Quill, however, when he urges us to change the law in the majority of our states so that in some circumstances patients may achieve a “good death” or a “dignified” one by means of lethal drugs.

Physician-Assisted Suicide in Oregon: The ‘Death with Dignity’ Data

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy E. Hiscox
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
The State ◽  
Voluntary Euthanasia ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
The World ◽  
Death With Dignity Act ◽  
Dignity Act

Pressure to permit voluntary euthanasia and/or physician-assisted suicide is mounting in several jurisdictions around the world. The state of Oregon, which legalised physician-assisted suicide in 1997, provides valuable guidance on the feasibility of effective regulation. The Oregon experience provides the focus of this article. The article comprises two parts. Part I critically analyses the Oregon Death with Dignity Act and evaluates the adequacy of the legislative safeguards. Part II examines the implementation of the Death with Dignity Act. It outlines the significant official findings since physician-assisted suicide was legalised, and calls attention to worrisome aspects and identifiable trends. It then provides an overall assessment of the legislation in light of the available empirical data.

AMA Reconsiders Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Ralph A. Capone ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Judicial Affairs ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Recent Edition

In 1847, the American Medical Association established the first professional code of ethics for physicians in the United States. Expanded over the years to meet the needs of the medical profession, its most recent edition, adopted in 2016, includes a statement of AMA principles of medical ethics and eleven sets of opinions on various topics. After 169 years of opposition to physician involvement in directly causing patients’ deaths, the AMA is considering a change in its position—a position that has always averred the sacredness of every human life, asserting that the physician’s role is to cure when possible, care always, and ultimately err on the side of protecting and preserving human life. Following its annual meeting this past June, the AMA House of Delegates recommended that the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs study aid-in-dying as an end-of- life option and report back at the annual meeting in 2017.

scholarly journals Author(iz)ing Death: Medical Aid-in-Dying and the Morality of Suicide

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Hannig
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Medical Assistance ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
Assisted Death ◽  
Medical Aid ◽  
Medical Assistance In Dying ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Death With Dignity Act ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary ◽  
Dignity Act

In 2017, Oregon marked the twentieth anniversary of enacting the Death with Dignity Act, allowing terminally ill, mentally competent adult patients to end their life by ingesting a lethal medication prescribed by their physician. In U.S. public discourse, medical aid-in-dying is frequently equated with the terminology and morality of suicide, much to the frustration of those who use and administer the law. This article reflects on the stakes of maintaining a distinction between a medically assisted death and the most common cultural category for self-inflicted death—suicide. It uncovers the complicated dialectic between authorship and authorization that characterizes medical assistance in dying and attendant moralities of purposive death, speaking to broader disciplinary concerns in the cultural study of death and medicine. By stressing the primacy of debilitating, life-limiting illness in an aided death and by submitting such a death to the rationale and management of institutionalized medicine, advocates carve out a form of intentional death that occupies a category of its own. The diffusion of agency onto a patient’s fatal illness, medicine, and the state—both discursively and in practice—enhances the moral and social acceptability of an assisted death, which becomes an authorized form of dying that looks very different from the socially deviant act of suicide.

Assisted suicide, recent judicial decisions, and implications for critical care nurses

1997 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
GS Wlody
Keyword(s):  
Critical Care ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Care Nurses ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Death With Dignity Act ◽  
The Individual

The passage of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act on November 8, 1994, heralded a wake-up call for healthcare professionals. Oregon, the first state to systematically "ration care" was thought to be a fertile ground for testing new and, some say, radical concepts in healthcare and government. Although the act was not implemented because it was tied up in legal action until February 1997, the fact that more than 50% of the voters in Oregon voted for it mandates that healthcare providers listen to their patients. Patients want more control of their pain, the way they die, and the resources spent on their care in the final days of their lives. Thoughts of future suffering engender great fear on the part of healthcare consumers. Concern exists that physician-assisted suicide in the ICU will affect not only physicians but also nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, and other clinicians as terminally ill patients make requests for assisted suicide while in the acute and critical care setting of the hospital. Critical care nurses must examine their value systems, review the Code for Nurses, and make their own decisions about participation in deliberately ending lives of patients. With the impending Supreme Court decision due in July 1997, the court may leave these issues to the individual states, opening the door for assisted suicide to occur throughout the United States. Therefore, the possibility will remain that critical care nurses may be put in positions in which physicians are providing assistance to patients who wish to commit suicide and are requesting nurses' assistance to do so.

Rights of the Terminally Ill Act of the Australian Northern Territory

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intractable Pain ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Death With Dignity ◽  
Assisted Death ◽  
Court Of Appeals

Over the past year the debate over physician-assisted death has been waged in several courts and legislatures, and before at least one electorate as well. Measure 16, the Oregon Death With Dignity initiative that would permit physician-assisted suicide in some circumstances, was approved by the electorate; but it remains on hold while a permanent injunction issued against it by a Federal judge is reviewed by the United States Court of Appeals. Another Federal court judge's decision that the Washington statute criminalizing physician-assisted suicide was unconstitutional when applied to the case of a competent terminally ill patient in intractable pain, was reversed by a three judge panel of that same United States Court of Appeals.

Physician Aid-in-Dying: Toward A “Harm Reduction” Approach

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Heilig ◽  
Stephen Jamison
Keyword(s):  
Social Issue ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
The United States ◽  
Active Euthanasia ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Bioethical Issue ◽  
The World ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
The 1960S

As a bioethical and social issue, euthanasia has become in the 1990s what abor- tion was in the 1960s. Around the world, a de facto taboo on open discussion of the practice is seemingly falling by the wayside, as recognition increases that “active” euthanasia is taking place in spite of social and legal prohibitions. Euthanasia, or more specifically physician-assisted suicide, has become the most visible bioethical issue of the present era; and in the United States the debate has taken on a prominence and urgency unprecedented in our nation's history.

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