by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A psychiatrist in Portland, Oregon is planning to open a “Death with Dignity” house in a suburban neighborhood where the terminally ill can come to kill themselves.
According to Oregon’s KOINLocal6.com, Portland psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Weisberg is planning to open “Dignity House” in nearby Sellwood which will be used as a clinic for people who wish to commit assisted suicide, which is legal under the state’s Death with Dignity Act.
While these houses exist in other countries, this is the first to be established on U.S. soil.
Dr. Weisberg claims he made the decision to open the house after watching a recent television interview with Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the assisted suicide pioneer who served eight years behind bars for the murder of one of his patients in 1998.
Weisberg’s Dignity House will allow the terminally ill to end their lives with prescribed drugs for a price of $5,000 and promises to provide top-notch care to his patients including catering, security, video taping, music and flowers.
Some people support the idea, such as Natalie Petersen, whose father talked about assisted suicide before he died.
“In the end, he didn’t want to do it,” she told KOIN. “It was too scary for him but some people, you should be able to choose that.”
Others, however, find the whole concept reprehensible.
“Imagine a psychiatrist pushing suicide!” writes attorney and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith. “This should be considered a breach of professional ethics because it puts the authority of the mental health professions in favor of self destruction. Here’s a novel idea: How about a clinic to help people not want to commit assisted suicide?”
Smith makes a valid point. Numerous studies have shown that as many as one in four terminally ill patients in Oregon who opted for physician-assisted suicide in the past 13 years were found to have been suffering from clinical depression and may not have been capable of making an informed, rational decision about ending their lives.
It remains to be seen how the neighbors of “Dignity House” will react to having such an establishment in their neighborhoods. Residents who live near similar houses in Switzerland have complained about the eeriness of watching people go into the house and never come out. The houses are also known to attract the desperate, the mentally ill, and the suicidal, making life on their streets uncomfortable and even dangerous.
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