Who uses assisted suicide more — the vulnerable or the elite?

The following excerpts are from Brittany Levine, Assisted-suicide study finds no bias against the vulnerable, USA Today, Oct. 17, 2007, at 9D:

Medical advocacy groups have long said the legalization of physician-assisted suicide is a slippery slope that could lead to the abuse of vulnerable groups.

But a study in the Journal of Medical Ethics finds no evidence to support that prediction.

The study examined data from Oregon, the only state that has legalized physician-assisted suicide, and the Netherlands, which has openly practiced it since the 1980s.

Researchers focused on such groups as the elderly, women, the uninsured in Oregon (the Netherlands has universal insurance), racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, the less educated, people with psychiatric illnesses, minors, the chronically ill and people with AIDS.

The question driving the research was whether such groups would be pressured or manipulated to request or accept assisted suicide by “overburdened family members, callous physicians, or institutions or insurers concerned about their own profits,” according to the study.

The study finds that people with AIDS were the only group with heightened use of physician-assisted suicide. * * *

Overall, people who died with a doctor’s help were more likely to be members of groups “enjoying comparative social, economic, educational, professional, and other privileges,” the study says.