Analysis of Impact
From the act's passage through 2011, a total of 935 people have had prescriptions written and 596 patients have died from ingesting medications prescribed under the act. The average age of the 596 patients who died from ingesting medication was 71, with 80.9 percent of patients suffering from malignant neoplasms (cancer). Of the 596, 51.7% were male (48.3% female); 44.7% had a Baccalaureate degree or higher; 45.7% were married; primary end of life concerns were loss of autonomy (90.9%), inability to make life enjoyable (88.3%), and loss of dignity (82.7%).
An independent study published in the October 2007 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics reports there was "no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly, women, the uninsured, people with low educational status, the poor, the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic minorities, compared with background populations."
Read more about this topic: Oregon Ballot Measure 16 (1994)
Famous quotes containing the word impact:
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)