You don't really expect them to do research for information that would discredit their deepest held beliefs, do you? That would be too rational.
http://disweb.org/cda/issues/pas/golden3.html
•OTHER SUPPOSED SAFEGUARDS. In Oregon's law and this bill, doctors are not supposed to write a lethal prescription under inappropriate conditions which are defined in the law. This is seen as a supposed safeguard. But what's happened in several cases in Oregon is "doctor shopping" - if one physician refuses assisted suicide because the patient doesn't meet the conditions in the law, another physician is sought who will approve it, often one who's an assisted suicide advocate. Such was the case of Kate Cheney, age 85, whose case was described in The Oregonian in October 1999. Her doctor refused to prescribe the lethal medication, because he thought the request was actually the result of pressure by an assertive daughter who was stuck with caregiving, rather than the free choice of the mother. So the family found another doctor, and Ms. Cheney is now dead.
There is one safeguard in this bill - for HMO's and doctors: the "good faith" standard. This "safeguard" provides that no person will be subject to any form of legal liability if they claim that they acted in "good faith." A claimed "good faith" belief that the requirements of the law are satisfied is virtually impossible to disprove, rendering all other proposed "safeguards" effectively unenforceable.
•THIS SO-CALLED NARROW PROPOSAL WILL INEVITABLY EXPAND. As the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law wrote, "Once society authorizes assisted suicide for...terminally ill patients experiencing unrelievable suffering, it will be difficult if not impossible to contain the option to such a limited group. Individuals who are not (able to make the choice for themselves), who are not terminally ill, or who cannot self-administer lethal drugs will also seek the option of assisted suicide, and no principled basis will exist to deny (it)."[5]
The longest experience we have with assisted suicide is in the Netherlands, where not only assisted suicide but also active euthanasia is practiced. The Netherlands is a very frightening laboratory experiment where, because of assisted suicide and euthanasia, "Pressure for improved palliative care appears to have evaporated."[6] Assisted suicide and euthanasia have become, not just the exception, but the rule for people with terminal illness.
"Over the past two decades, the Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia for the terminally ill to euthanasia for the chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress and from voluntary euthanasia to nonvoluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Once the Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally to deny more active medical (assistance to die), i.e. euthanasia, to those who could not effect their own deaths. Nor could they deny assisted suicide or euthanasia to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally ill or to those who have psychological pain not associated with physical disease. To do so would be a form of discrimination. Involuntary euthanasia has been justified as necessitated by the need to make decisions for patients not competent to choose for themselves."[7] In other words, for a substantial number of people in the Netherlands, doctors have decided patients should die without consultation with the patients.
Furthermore, assisted suicide proponents and medical personnel alike have documented how taking lethal drugs by mouth is often ineffective in fulfilling its intended purpose. The body expels the drugs through vomiting, or the person falls into a lengthy state of unconsciousness rather than dying promptly, as so-called "death with dignity" advocates wish. Such ineffective suicide attempts can happen in a substantial percentage of cases -- estimates range from 15% to 25%. The way to prevent these "problems," in the view of euthanasia advocates, is by legalizing lethal injections by doctors, which is active euthanasia. This is an inevitable next step if society first accepts assisted suicide as a legitimate legal option.
