Have the safeguards included in the Oregon law allowing physician-assisted suicide worked to protect vulnerable patients from abuse or expansion of the criteria?
CASE 1: Michael Freeland requested and received a lethal prescription from Dr. Peter Reagan, a suicide advocate, a few months after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Dr. Reagan offered to refill it when he outlived his 6 month limit. Over a year after receiving the first prescription, he was admitted to a psychiatric treatment facility with depression and suicidal intent. He was treated and improved. His professional caregivers ensured that all of his 32 guns and ammunition were removed from his home before he was allowed to return, but they knowingly allowed him to keep his lethal prescription. His treating psychiatrist wrote a letter to the court the day after his discharge saying he was not competent and needed a guardian. Mr. Freeland called Physicians for Compassionate Care (he called them accidentally; he was actually trying to contact the suicide advocacy organization Compassion in Dying). PCC volunteers helped him through his last several months of life, saw that his depression
