Does Legalization of Medical Assistance in Dying Affect Rates of Non-Assisted Suicide?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Keywords
Physician Assisted Suicide, United States, Medical Assistance in Dying, Canada, Lamb v Canada, Legal Analysis, Critique
Abstract
In 2015, the Southern Medical Journal published a paper by Jones and Paton that explored the effects of legalizing physician-assisted suicide (PAS) on state-level suicide rates using empirical data from Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Vermont.(1) It is essential to assess this paper critically because: a) there is little literature on this topic and so any available papers may be given significant weight in public and policy debates on medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada; b) the paper has been used in attempts to support particular policy positions in relation to MAiD in Canada (e.g., Sonier, 2016); and c) the paper may be referenced as an academic foundation for claims about the effects of legalization that will be made in the Charter challenge to the new Canadian MAiD legislation (Lamb v. Canada (Attorney General), 2016) and ongoing debates in Canada (including the statutorily mandated independent reviews (2) commissioned by the government and being conducted by an independent expert panel appointed by the Council of Canadian Academies (3) on three outstanding issues regarding access to MAiD in Canada). We present a description of the Jones and Paton paper’s objectives, methods, and results. We then explore its strengths and weaknesses, and illustrate the problems with interpreting the data as the authors have done. We conclude that the interpretations of the authors are not supported by the data presented and we caution against using the authors’ conclusions for the purposes of informing public opinion, litigation, and law reform.
Recommended Citation
Jocelyn Downie & Matthew Lowe, "Does Legalization of Medical Assistance in Dying Affect Rates of Non-Assisted Suicide?" (2017) 10 J Ethics in Mental Health 1.
