Oregon Physician Reveals Dangers of Legalized Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide: N. Gregory Hamilton, MD warns of threat to hospice mission

Hospice Patients Alliance: Consumer Advocacy

Oregon Physician and Patient Advocate N. Gregory Hamilton, MD
Reveals Dangers of Legalized Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide -
Warns of Threat to Hospice Mission Itself

[note the following is the unedited warning to the public from physician and patient advocate N. Gregory Hamilton, MD, dated February 19,2001.]

"In Oregon, where assisted suicide is now legal, hospice workers often condone individuals taking lethal overdoses, instead of receiving the ongoing care and concern they deserve. This failure to value the lives of vulnerable patients threatens the very basis of western medicine -- a trusting relationship.

Many Oregon patients are now expressing fear that the culture of death growing in their state will undermine the core concepts of good palliative care.

Many have become afraid to enroll in hospice until the last possible moment. And some patients have become afraid to receive hospice care at all, because they have sensed a shift in the attitude of hospice. This fear threatens the entire palliative care movement. Hospice allowing assisted suicide as an alternative to good care may prove its own death knell."

N. Gregory Hamilton, M.D.
Senior Scholar
Physicians for Compassionate Care
http://www.pccef.org

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Oregon Physician and Patient Advocate N. Gregory Hamilton, MD Reveals Dangers of Legalized Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide - Warns of Threat to Hospice Mission Itself

Oregon Physician and Patient Advocate N. Gregory Hamilton, MD
Reveals Dangers of Legalized Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide -
Warns of Threat to Hospice Mission Itself