Recent Studies Show Assisted Suicide on the Rise

TND Guest Contributor: Janet Phelan |

The assisted suicide fever is sweeping the globe. Country after country has been considering AS legislation, and a number of nations have already passed such legislation into law.  The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg all have AS laws on the books, and in the last twenty years, over 100 AS campaigns have been launched in the United States alone.

Nearly all of them have failed. However, Oregon, Washington and Vermont have passed AS legislation and a Montana court has rendered a judicial decision providing a defense for a doctor assisting in a suicide. Just in the past week, a court of appeals in New Mexico struck down a right to die ruling. California SB 128, entitled “End of Life,” passed in the California Senate but appears to have died in the Assembly.

The proponents of assisted suicide are persistent and, if George Soros’s support for the California bill is any indication, they are heavily funded. Make no mistake, this is business. Dignitas in Switzerland charges over $5,000 US to assist someone into the hereafter. Should you wish Dignitas to also take charge of what is generally considered to be “family duties,” such as funeral expenses, the fee rises to $9,210.53.

Two new studies report that assisted suicide is on the rise in Belgium and also in the state of  Washington, which passed AS legislation into law in 2008. According to the Belgium study, published in August in the Journal of the American Medical Association, assisted suicide is becoming more popular.  In Flanders—the Dutch-speaking, northern part of Belgium—a sample study indicated that euthanasia increased to 4.6% of reported deaths in the first half of 2013. This is up from 1.9% reported in a similar sample during the first half of 2007.  In addition, the study found that the percentage of requests for AS that were granted also rose—up from 55% in 2007 to over 75% in 2013.

The state of Washington has also just released its annual report on its assisted suicide program. According to the report, in 2014 176 people  received prescriptions for the lethal drugs. This is double the numbers from the first full calendar year of operation, in which 87 people received the prescription.

However, a close analysis of the Washington report has raised some significant questions. One issue surrounds compliance with the law, which mandates that only those on the verge of death may qualify for AS. According to Richard Egan, who is with the Coalition for the Defence of Human Life, “Although the Act specifies that only persons with “six months or less to live” may request lethal doses of medication from a physician, the data shows that in each year between 5% and 17% of those who die after requesting a lethal dose do so more than 25 weeks later with one person in 2012 dying nearly 3 years (150 weeks) later.

In addition, it appears that all those requesting and receiving the lethal drugs are not actually ingesting them.  While the study states that 176 people got the drugs, the report states that only 126 ingested them and that 17 died of other causes.

Alex Schadenberg, of Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, has also found the Washington report less than adequate. He has stated,“When you comb through the data there is actually a lot of missing information We often focus on the number of unreported euthanasia deaths in Belgium, but it appears that there may be a number of unreported assisted suicide deaths in Washington State.