"Death with dignity”, aka physician-assisted suicide, became legal in Washington state today. Nearly 60% of voters supported the radical change in a referendum last November.

Writing in the American Journal of Bioethics, Nancy S. Jecker, of the University of Washington, predicts that other states will follow. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) has been legal in neighbouring Oregon since 1997 and the experience, she says, has been positive. The main problem in her view is that most of the people dying are white and college-educated and have health insurance. There should be more access for Asians, native Americans, Hispanics and African-Americans.

“If Washington’s experience is similar to Oregon’s, many of the empirically-based arguments against physician-assisted suicide will further erode, and the arguments supporting this practice will appear all the more persuasive as a result,” she says.

In fact, not far away, in Montana, this is already happening. Last year a judge ruled that PAS was a basic human right and if it survives an appeal to the state’s supreme court, it will become legal there too.

Statistics release this week show that 60 Oregonians ended their lives last year with a lethal drug dose prescribed by their doctor. This is the highest annual total in the 11-year history of the law, 11 more than in 2007. Since 1997, 401 have died. Deaths from a drug prescribed under the Oregon law now account for 2 of every 1,000 deaths in Oregon. ~ The Oregonian, Mar 3; The Olympian, Mar 2; AJOB, March