Ethics Newsline®

WASHINGTON
New research suggests that legalized physician-assisted suicide has not been used as a method to eradicate people who could be a burden to society.

The BBC reports the study was designed to test claims that in places were doctors are legally allowed to help people die, the practice would be used to coerce the most vulnerable members of society to end their lives.

The study appears to contradict worries that the legalized practice would lead to disproportionate deaths of the elderly, women, minorities, the mentally ill, the poor, or the less-educated, according to a report from UPI.

“We found that there is no evidence of disproportionate impact of these practices, when legal, on any of those groups, with the exception of people with AIDS,” University of Utah bioethicist Margaret Battin, who led the study appearing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, told the Reuters news agency.

But Reuters notes that the incidence of higher suicide rates among AIDS patients represents a very small number of cases.

Britain’s Channel 4 News reports that the study focused on Oregon and the Netherlands, where law permits doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients documented as being terminally ill. In Oregon, patients must take the drugs themselves, while in the Netherlands physicians can actually administer the lethal dose.

The study will be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics.