Loss of Control Over Life Leads Some to Suicide, Researchers Find

Terminally ill patients who choose physician-assisted suicide are not driven by pain or poverty, but by the fear of losing control over their lives, researchers report in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. Race, gender, education and health insurance--or the lack of it--played no role in a person’s decision to choose death, according to a team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study examined 15 people who used Oregon’s “Death With Dignity Act” to kill themselves in 1998. “Many people feared that physician-assisted suicide . . . would be disproportionately chosen by, or forced on, terminally ill patients who were poor, uneducated, uninsured, or fearful of the financial consequences of their illness,” the team wrote. “We found no evidence to support those fears.”

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II