Death with Dignity law creates new business
SELLWOOD, Ore. - Oregon's Death with Dignity Act takes a new turn in Sellwood as Dr. Stuart Weisberg, a psychiatrist from Portland, plans to create "Dignity House." This organization would be the first of its kind in the nation and will allow patients to kill themselves
with medication provided by the Dignity House.
Oregon's Death with Dignity Act passed in 1997 and made it possible for the terminally-ill to end their lives with prescribed drugs in the comfort of their own home. Weisberg's' Dignity House will provide the same services for a price of $5,000.
"We don't run it with volunteers, so you have to pay people to do the job, and you can't really pay them $10 an hour either," said Weisberg. "They have to be professionals."
The services Weisberg plans to provide include catering, security, video taping, music and flowers.
"We're hoping that history looks back and calls our previous care of the dying-barbaric," Weisberg said.
Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan pathologist who served a prison sentence for providing prescription drugs to terminally ill patients, was the inspiration behind Weisberg's creation of the Dignity House.
Weisberg runs a psychiatric clinic in northwest Portland, and he plans to operate his Dignity House in Sellwood.
Along with services and products to terminate lives, Weisberg's organization is stirring up a lot o controversy. Bob Knight, whose mother recently passed away, believes that just because Death with Dignity in Oregon is legal, it doesn't make it right.
"I don't want some outside force having the opportunity to make that decision," Bob Knight said.
On the other side, many welcome the idea of a Dignity House, including Natalie Petersen, whose father talked about assisted suicide before he died.
"In the end, he didn't want to do it," said Petersen. "It was too scary for him but some people, you should be able to choose that."
According to the Oregon Death with Dignity law, doctors have provided means and care for 59 individuals to end their lives, provided they were diagnosed with a terminal illness within the last year.
--By Alexandra Bachmann