1994

Oregon, via referendum, approves Death with Dignity Act that allows physicians to prescribe, but not to administer, lethal doses of drugs for patients who had less than six months to live, who had been deemed mentally competent, and who chose death voluntarily in front of witnesses. After Oregonians approved the PAS referendum a second time, the law went into effect in October 1997 (Wailoo II; Lavi, 164ff.). “. . . a central component of the Oregon act – which has its roots deep in the nineteenth century – is the role played by the accompanying physician at the deathbed. . . . [attending physicians are the vehicle of patient’s informed consent] which should not be understood naively as offering all available information to patients . . . informed consent is a means by which the patient’s autonomy is structured within the regulatory regime of modern medicine.” Patient’s decision is also structured via an “elaborated array of safeguards,” which “creates a process through which the desires of the patient will be constructed and not simply discovered (e.g., introducing both the family and the therapist, whose advice can be rejected but who cannot be ignored (Lavi, 167-168).