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'Euthanasia' in the Third Reich: Lessons for Today? A Disability Perspective from the United States on the Case of Ms. B Alternative to Euthanasia: Pain Management Assisted Suicide: A Disability Perspective Dutch Court Decisions on Nonvoluntary Euthanasia Critically Reviewed Lessons From History's Most Calamitous Experience Mental Disorder in Elderly Suicides: A Case-Control Study Physician-Assisted Suicide: Reflections on Oregon's First Case Responding to Requests for Physician-Assisted Suicide Suicide Intervention for People with Disabilities: A Lesson in Inequality The Case of Ms. B: Suicide's Slippery Slope? The Glucksberg & Quill Amicus Curiae Briefs: Verbatim Arguments Opposing Assisted Suicide The Impact of Assisted Suicide on Persons with Disabilities - Is It A Right Without Freedom? The Model Physician-Assisted Suicide Act and the Jurisprudence of Death |
A Comparison of Characteristics of Kevorkian Euthanasia Cases and Physician-Assisted Suicides in Oregon Lori A. Roscoe et al., A Comparison of Characteristics of Kevorkian Euthanasia Cases and Physician-Assisted Suicides in Oregon, 41 Gerontologist 439 (2001).The sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of Kevorkian euthanasia cases were compared with Oregon physician-assisted suicide (PAS) cases and U.S. mortality data. Two hundred variables were coded from medical examiner reports on all 69 Kevorkian euthanasia cases who died and were autopsied by the Oakland County Medical Examiner. Data on the forty-three Oregon PAS cases in the first two years and U.S. mortality data were obtained from published sources. Only twenty-five percent of patients euthanized by Kevorkian were terminally ill as compared to one hundred percent of Oregon PAS cases. PAS cases were significantly more likely to have cancer (72%) than euthanasia cases (29%). Women and those who were divorced or had never married were significantly more likely to seek euthanasia than would have been predicted by national mortality statistics. The results of the analyses revealed: (1) the vulnerability of persons who were not terminally ill to seek Kevorkian for euthanasia, unchecked by clinical safeguards; (2) the high representation of women who chose euthanasia; and (3) the greater likelihood of persons who were divorced or never married to seek an assisted death, a pattern evident in both the Kevorkian euthanasia and first-year (1998) PAS cases. Posted on June 25, 2004. |