Anyone You Can Kill, I Can Kill Better

"I can kill anyone better than you!"  Interesting news out of Oregon, one of two states in the nation with legal assisted suicide.  The Patients' Rights Council reports:

...Since Oregon’s Death with Dignity law took effect in 1997, the assisted-suicide advocacy group Compassion & Choices of Oregon (C&C-OR) has kept tight control of the law’s implementation to prevent word of any abuses or violations from reaching the public. The group facilitates over 90% of Oregon’s doctor-prescribed suicides and has a statewide network of doctors and pharmacists to prescribe and dispense lethal drugs. It was this control that prompted a strong editorial in the state’s largest newspaper. "Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide program has not been sufficiently transparent," the editorial read. "Essentially, a coterie of insiders run the program, with a handful of doctors and others deciding what the public may know…." [Oregonian, 9/20/08]

So when Dr. Stuart Wiesberg, a 37 year-old, Portland psychiatrist, suddenly announced his plans to open the first ever Dignity House where people can go for a customized assisted suicide for a price, C&C-OR’s executive director George Eighmey immediately went into damage control mode, calling the plan "ghoulish" and the "commercialization of death with dignity." [ABC News, 6/24/10] But what Eighmey didn’t say was that there is nothing in Oregon’s assisted-suicide law that legally prevents the establishment of for-profit suicide clinics.

For one day, Wiesberg had the media’s full attention. He already had the house in Portland and had filed the necessary incorporation papers with the state. He even had his web site, endoflifeconsultants.com, up and running.

The web site spelled out the law’s requirements—to which he pledged total compliance—and the prices of the various death services he would provide. The full death package, including catering, flowers, video taping, a beautician, "magical" music, fine linens, and a security agent, if needed, would cost $5,000. But all fees had to be paid ahead of time by cashier’s check or postal money order, unless the soon-to-be-dead person opted for the full package. Then a credit card payment directly to Wiesberg’s account would be okay.

Wiesberg said he got the idea for Dignity House after seeing a recent interview featuring Jack Kevorkian, Michigan’s Dr. Death. At that moment, he decided there were too many barriers in the assisted-suicide law. He was so inspired by Kevorkian that he invited him and about thirty others to a dinner on July 21 to unveil his new business. [Oregonian, 6/23/10; KGW-TV, 6/22/10; endoflifeconsultants.com]

But that dinner never took place, and the web site is no longer online. After just one day of Dignity House being headline news, the Oregon Medical Board (OMB) issued an emergency order suspending Wiesberg’s license to practice medicine, ostensibly not because of Dignity House, but for improperly prescribing drugs to two of his regular psychiatric patients...

And here's the song that inspired the title: