Oregon: Death with Dignity house planned

Description: [of the article from KGW.com]

Portland psychiatrist, Dr. Stuart Weisberg is about to do what no one has dared in Oregon. He plans to open a home in the Sellwood neighborhood where terminally ill Oregonians can kill themselves under the state's Death with Dignity law.

Dr. Weisberg said he felt compelled to act after watching a TV interview with Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who pioneered assisted suicide. He decided there are too many barriers in Oregon's law. "Very few doctors are willing to approach it and I think a lot of patients are scared to approach it," said Dr. Weisberg. "It's only until they are desperate because they are suffering so greatly that they even look into it. And by then it's too late and no doctor wants to touch them," he said.

Under Oregon law, a legal resident who is terminally ill and has agreement from two doctors that the person has only six months to live, is eligible for a lethal dose of drugs from a pharmacy in order to end their own life. The Oregon Department of Human Services reports 59 people used the law to end their own life in 2009. Fifty-five different doctors wrote lethal prescriptions.

Still, Dr. Weisberg believes there is a need in the community. He posted a web site www.endoflifeconsultants.com to explain his services. They include catering, security, video taping, music, flowers and — for an additional $1,200 — three hours with the psychiatrist and his therapy dog. The total package carries a price tag of $5,000.

[There is information in the Notes section below.]
[There are other related stories in the Links section below.]
[There are stories in the Overflow section below.]

Links:

To read the full article click on one of these links, both of which go to the same destination. A short link is provided for the convenience of readers. Also, readers may search and browse past and future advisories on the web (see bottom.)

  • http://tinyurl.com/3xxvjwn

  • http://www.kgw.com/news/local/Death-with-Dignity-house-planned-in-Sellwood-96938714.html

    Also see:

  • Oregon Medical Board suspends doctor who wants to open a Portland facility [Oregon Live]
    http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/06/oregon_medical_board_suspends.html
    A Portland psychiatrist who plans to open a private facility where people could end their lives under Oregon's assisted-suicide law was suspended from medical practice Thursday amid a second investigation for improperly prescribing drugs.

    The Oregon Medical Board voted 8-0 to suspend Stuart G. Weisberg, 37, a solo practitioner in Northwest Portland specializing in treating addictions. Weisberg did not return phone calls Thursday for comment. Kathleen Haley, the board's executive director, said the suspension means Weisberg "cannot practice, period."

    In 2006, the board gave Weisberg a five-year reprimand for improperly prescribing psychoactive drugs to seven patients who were recovering drug addicts or suffering chronic pain. Last year, the board lifted the reprimand but put Weisberg under the watch of another doctor. Haley said Thursday the "practice mentor" recently informed the medical board that Weisberg had terminated the relationship. The board learned that during the mentoring, Weisberg had wrongly authorized a medical-marijuana card for a drug addict and had improperly prescribed a different drug for another patient.

Source:

Dooris, Pat. "Sellwood Death with Dignity house planned". kgw.com. Updated Wednesday, Jun 23 at 6:54 AM. <www.kgw.com/news/local/Death-with-Dignity-house-planned-in-Sellwood-96938714.html>. Newschannel 8, Portland. (c) 2009-2010 King Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of Belo Corp. All Rights Reserved.

Tags:

Tags (or keywords) briefly indicate some major topics of the report.

  • Death With Dignity Act

  • Oregon

  • U.S.A.

Notes:

  • "What Broke My Father's Heart", the New York Times piece that is the first item in today's Overflow, is a well-written, moving and instructive end-of-life story.

  • German Court Rules on Withdrawal of Treatment [British Medical Journal Medical Ethics blog]
    http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2010/06/25/german-court-rules-on-withdrawal-of-treatment/
    Iain Brassington provides an accurate take on this story: German courts have today ruled that it is legal to withdraw lifesaving treatment with consent.

    According to Deutsche Welle,
    "Germany's highest criminal court has ruled that passive assisted suicide is legal if the patient has explicitly decreed his or her wish that treatment used to keep the patient alive should be terminated. "Turning off a ventilator or cutting a feeding tube fall under the category of permissible forms of terminating treatment," judge Ruth Rissing van Saan said."

    The DW headline refers to this as confirming the legality of passive assisted suicide; the BBC, in its coverage, refers to it as having legalised euthanasia with consent. As far as I can tell, both organisations are wrong. This, from the reports available at the moment, is not clearly euthanasia. At most, it's about resolving a question concerning whether an advance directive refusing treatment should stand. Unless you think that withdrawing treatment at the request of the patient is de facto euthanasia - and it isn't - then this is not euthanasia.

  • Status of euthanasia, assisted suicide in Europe [Yahoo! News UK]
    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100625/thl-uk-germany-court-suicide-factbox-b2e59e8.html

    A review of the situation in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Britain.

  • Dignitas founder Ludwig Minelli "now a multi-millionaire" [Daily Mail]
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1289217/Dignitas-founder-Ludwig-Minelli-multi-millionaire.html

    Swiss magazine Beobachter says that Ludwig Minelli, founder and manager of Dignitas, has had an unexplained increase in his personal wealth of 1.3 million pounds since opening Dignitas. Minelli has kept Dignitas finances secret.

Overflow:

Stories that EuthaNEWSia did not get to:

  • NYT Sunday Magazine: Turning Off Pacemakers [Pallimed: A Hospice & Palliative Medicine Blog]
    http://www.pallimed.org/2010/06/nyt-sunday-magazine-turning-off.html
    The New York Times Sunday magazine published a must-read article for any hospice or palliative care professional. I just read it this evening after receiving a couple of tips from Pallimed readers and don't have time to do the analysis tonight before the email goes out. Hopefully Lyle or I will likely get to covering the article in more detail later this week.

    Some of the issues covered include:
    family decision to deactivate a pacemaker
    cardiologists insisting on implantation
    cardiologists refusing (on moral grounds) to deactivate a pacemaker
    getting palliative care and later hospice involved in a patient with advancing dementia
    the widower effect on mortality
    informed consent
    the distant adult child effect
    living wills
    out of hospital DNR orders and bracelets
    deciding on nursing home placement
    lack of effective professional-to-professional communication
    caregiver exhaustion
    See. I told you that you must read it.

  • Scotland: 87 per cent of submissions against MacDonald's bill [The Scotsman]
    http://news.scotsman.com/health/Opponents-deal-a-blow-to.6372261.jp
    The report begins: MARGO MacDonald's bid to introduce assisted suicide in Scotland has been dealt a blow, with the vast majority of people giving evidence to Holyrood on the issue declaring that they oppose her bill. Analysis of the reaction generated by Ms MacDonald's End of Life Assistance Bill has revealed that 87 per cent of those who took time to produce written evidence were against it.

    Later in the story: Ms MacDonald said: "This doesn't surprise me. Nor does it discourage me.

    "Much of this has been a result of an orchestrated campaign against my bill. I don't blame people for what they believe in, but if there was a properly weighted opinion poll in Scotland, the results would be the same as they have been in other opinion polls, that between two thirds and three quarters of people are in favour of legal assistance to die. "I expect more a lot more people to get in touch with their MSPs in support of this as it goes through parliament."

  • Idaho: Law affects end-of-life care [Coeur d'Alene Press]
    http://www.cdapress.com/news/local_news/article_443903c6-b7a4-5faf-929d-b66271b7115d.html
    The report begins: "A new law goes into effect July 1 giving Idaho health care workers the right to refuse to provide end-of-life care they find morally objectionable. Some fear the legislation places the conscience of a caregiver ahead of a dying person's rights.

    "We very strongly opposed this legislation this year," said David Irwin, spokesman for AARP of Idaho. "This is a bad idea. It's bad policy. It's not respective of the rights of Idahoans." The organization, representing older Idaho residents, is most concerned, Irwin said, about the legislation's effect on living wills and advanced directives, legally-binding documents that allow persons with terminal or irreversible conditions to dictate whether caregivers should continue artificial life-sustaining treatments.

    "If you draft a document that says you only want to be on life support for two weeks or three months, that's not something you do lightly," Irwin said. "That's why our members were so outraged by this. They want those rights to be respected, and this legislation allows those rights to not be respected."

  • Dr. Jack Kevorkian on Larry King Live [Politically Illustrated]
    http://politicallyillustrated.com/index.php?/news_page/video/1490/
    [A video can be viewed from this page.] The report begins: "Doctor Jack Kevorkian, a doctor known for wanting to kill his patients, joined Larry King on Friday in support of medically-assisted suicide.

    "They do it secretly now. Doctors do it secretly now. Also, you have spouses where one shoots and kills the other and then has to commit suicide because they are afraid of prosecution. These are unnecessary deaths, unnecessary suffering," Dr. Jack Kevorkian told Larry King.

    What would be his ideal law?

    "They would contact the doctor, the doctor would find out the complaint. The doctor would receive the clients medical records and research past treatments and analyze if anything else is possible to cure the pain. What works, what doesn't…" said Dr. Kevorkian.    "

ID:

The EuthaNEWSia ID for this advisory is: enid201006257051.
Mailed: Friday, June 25, 2010 14:47:18 -0600
at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Etcetera:

EuthaNEWSia is a free Canadian news advisory service covering end-of-life issues such as right to die, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. EuthaNEWSia is produced by the Right to Die Society of Canada which works toward a good death for all, including open, regulated and equitable access to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The editor is Michael Dawson <editor@euthanewsia.ca>. 

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