April 12, 2025
The Latest Data from Oregon
Earlier this month the Dutch government published its annual report on the state of voluntary euthanasia in this country which showed continuous growth in people seeking medical help to die.
Yet like most places where euthanasia/ assisted suicide is legal, relatively little data is collected on the type of deaths that people get.
In Switzerland for example, there is no data on the efficacy of the lethal drugs used (Nembutal), nor on other qualitative issues related to the dying experience such as time to loss of consciousness and time to death.
In Oregon (and Washington state) some data is collected.
In March 2025, Oregon published its annual review of its Death with Dignity Act.
This report was compiled using the records of 2454 deaths in the period 1998 – 2022 and serves as an overview of the first 25 years of the Oregon Death with Dignity law.
Summary of Results
Age & Gender
The mean age of those getting help to die in Oregon is 72.5 years. Slightly more men (53%) than women are likely to use the law. Overwhelmingly, these people are white (92%).
Illness & Place of Death
In 2024, the most common diseases of patients requesting help to die were: cancer (57%) neurological diseases (15%) and heart disease (11%).
Most people died at home (83%), and most were enrolled in hospice or palliative care (92%).
Who Follows Through?
Based on the Oregon data, it is estimated that around half of those who are prescribed lethal drugs actually take them.
Psychiatric Assessment
In the first years of the Oregon law, 28% of patients were referred for psychiatric assessment. In 2022, only 1% of patients underwent a psychiatric evaluation.
Class Status
According to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), those using the Act are skewed by class.
While income levels are not recorded, in Oregon there is a higher uptake among those with higher education levels. Indeed in 2024, 10% had doctoral or professional degrees.
Interestingly, when the Act first commenced, most of those getting help to die had private health insurance. However this trend has since reversed with most people now rely on state insurance such as Medicare or Medicaid.
Does this mean that people are seeking help to die because they do not have the finances for the type of care they want? This remains unknown.
In Switzerland, a 2014 study found assisted suicide to be associated with higher economic status. In this country there is also an over representation of women seeking help.
Length of Relationship with Treating Doctor
In Oregon, the duration of the relationship between a patient requesting help and their doctor has gone from an average of 18 weeks in 2010 to 5 weeks in 2022.
Perhaps doctors now are only contacted once a person gets to the ‘desperate’ stage of wanting/ needing to put plans in place.
Reasons for wanting to Die
One notable change over the years in people’s reasons for requesting help to die is the feeling that one is being a burden to one’s family (in 2024 this was 42%).
However, the vast majority of people say they want help to die because they are afraid of losing their autonomy (88%) and that their less able to enjoy the activities that make their life worth living (88%).
Drugs
Between 1998 – 2015 the most common drug used to help someone die were the barbiturates: phenobarbital, secobarbital and pentobarbital (Nembutal).
In 2015, drug companies hiked their prices for the barbiturates (from $387 in 2010 to $2878 in 2016) placing these drugs out of reach of most people. The medical profession then turned to other combination drugs such as DDMAP, DDMA and DDMA-Ph. (These combinations are discussed at length in the Peaceful Pill eHandbook).
Time to Death
The median time to death over the past 25 years in Oregon using these drug combinations has been 30 minutes.
The ‘aggregate range’ of time taken is 1 – 104 hours.
Given this huge range, it is perhaps surprising that Oregon does not collect data on what proportion of deaths are ‘unusually long’.
According to the 2024 report, what is known is that the median time to death after taking pentobarbital is 20 minutes.
When considering all of the drug combinations in 2024 (only), the time to death ranged from 7 minutes to 26 hours. The median time was 53 minutes (based on data from 261 cases).
In Washington state it has been reported that in 2021, 31% of patients died <30 minutes, however 16% took > 2 hours to die. Although, the exact drugs/ drug combinations has not been recorded.
*With the single use of the Sarco capsule (in Switzerland in September 2024), the person was recorded as losing consciousness < 2 minutes and dying < 7 minutes. Clearly many more cases of death by Sarco are needed for patterns to be established.
Complications
Complications (including vomiting and seizures) have been reported in an average of 11% (or 1 in 9) of cases between 2010 and 2022.
In 2022, complications were identified in 6% of patients. However data is missing for 206 patients!
Conclusion
The above data give some idea of the state of play of assisted suicide in Oregon and other countries.
It is perhaps surprising that there is so little data on the actualities of assisted dying across time and place.
This is especially surprising since there seems to be such differences in the speed and nature of death that some people experience.
The time it takes to die might surprise some. As would the fact that complications can and do occur and that these can and do include vomiting, ingestion problems and seizures.
Overall it remains surprising how little scientific oversight there is of this very important ‘field of medicine!’ Given how the rest of medicine is almost always researched to the ‘nth degree’.
Sources
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