Author Interviews, End of Life Care, JAMA / 10.04.2017
Who Takes Advantage of Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Charles D. Blanke, M.D., F.A.C.P., F.A.S.C.O.
CHAIR, SWOG
Professor, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute
Marquam II
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act as a voter initiative which law in 1997 – the first of its kind in the nation. Now, physician aid-in-dying is spreading quickly, with the states of Washington, Vermont, Colorado, and California passing similar legislation, as well as the District of Columbia, and Montana (through a court ruling). Millions of Americans lives in states where they would have the opportunity, if they were terminally ill, to take a lethal dose of medication with a doctor’s prescription.
My team here at SWOG, a global cancer research community that designs and conducts publicly funded clinical trials, wanted to look at Oregon’s 18 years of aid-in-dying data and answer some simple questions: Who is using the law? Why? Are the drugs effective? What are the trends in actually taking the prescribed medications? We found that use of law has mostly increased over time – and substantially increased in 2014 and 2015.
We found that predominantly white, older, well-educated people, take advantage of the law, and many of them – 77 percent – have underlying terminal cancer. The medication is also 99.4 percent effective.
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