The law also requires that two doctors agree the patient has less than six months to live and is mentally competent to make the decision. Two witnesses must support the patient's voluntary decision. The law further provides that the records of patients who utilize this right to die with dignity remain private. This is a tremendous step forward for those terminally ill people, relieving them and their families of the terrible last stages of cancer and other fatal diseases. Reactions are mixed that the United States won't fight Oregon's law.
Some doctors feel the law puts physicians in direct conflict with their Hippocratic oath.
Others are relieved that they can continue to help their patients who wish to die with dignity. Michigan is the only other state considering an assisted-suicide law. In 1996, a year before Oregon's law was passed, Dr. Diane E. Meier of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York sent questionnaires to 3,102 doctors. The results were published in the April 16 issue of New England Journal of Medicine . Only about one-third of those doctors, or 6 percent, said they had helped patients die.