Thread by @DrCalumMiller

We are told that Canada is the wrong place to look (because it is a euthanasia hellhole)

Instead, they say, this bill is based on Oregon

So what is the truth about Oregon's assisted suicide regime? 🧵

Rand Stroup, 53, outlived his initial prognosis of death within 2-4 months, and his doctor recommended stronger chemotherapy.

But his insurer said they weren't willing to pay for this chemotherapy - instead, offering to pay for assisted suicide.

In a stretched NHS, with a stagnating economy and a growing population, it is inevitable we will see the same in the UK

Oregon has followed the crazy regimes of Belgium, Netherlands and Canada in massively increasing suicide rates over time. Assisted suicides in the first year of legalisation were 27. By 2023, this was 367, an over 13-fold increase.

This isn't just fulfilling an already-existing demand. This is normalising and therefore contagiously spreading suicide.

Suicide rates rose from 13.9 per 100,000 in 1999 to 19.3 in 2022. Research shows that when assisted suicide is legalised, more general suicide rates increase (irp.cdn-website.com/c0d44f22/files…).

What about coercion? Suicide victims who say that "being a burden" is part of their reason went from 30% in the first 5 years to 46% from 2017-2022. The proportion citing financial concerns about treatment went from 0% in the first 2 years to 8.4% in 2021.

A supposed safeguard is that Oregon allows assisted suicide only for people with <6 months survival prognosis from their illness. But research shows that predictions of this nature are only 32% accurate (bmcpalliatcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…). This is woeful.

Moreover, the "6 month" safeguard is interpreted in Oregon to mean "without treatment" - but all sorts of easily treatable people would die within 6 months if they don't get treatment - e.g. if they have appendicitis!

What about the conditions for which assisted suicide is delivered? No longer is it just for cancer or similar condition, it has expanded to conditions like hernias or even anorexia.

(This is standard in other countries, which have also allowed people to have euthanasia for e.g. transgenderism, or as a quasi-death penalty for murderers/rapists).

Patients who had psychiatric evaluations before suicide declined from 28% in 1998 to just 0.8% now. This is no serious safeguard and there is no serious evaluation of someone's mental state from an expert in the field.

The large majority of patients barely know the physician prescribing the drugs, and some do not know the physician at all. Some patients took days to die after ingesting the drugs, and for 1/3 of patients this data is not even collected.

Oregon has also recently become a destination for suicide tourism - the same could easily happen in the UK.

So when advocates say that there has been no serious attempt to expand the law in Oregon, just look at the statistics. Even if the law doesn't change, the practice changes - and the law can always catch up later.

The reality is that this is a disaster which is killing vulnerable people in Oregon, just as it is anywhere else. Don't believe me? The annual report is here:

oregon.gov/oha/PH/PROVIDE…

MPs must vote NO today. Our vulnerable loved ones are at stake.