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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Physician-assisted suicide
— does gender matter? | | Author(s) | Lori A Roscoe |
| Journal title | Journal of Ethics, Law, and Aging, vol 5, no 2, Fall/Winter 1999 |
| Pages | pp 111-120 |
| Keywords | Older women ; Pain ; Medical care ; Euthanasia ; General practitioners ; Literature reviews ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | There is evidence that older women are disadvantaged in their treatment by the medical profession. This article examines the research literature which suggests that differences in women's social and health status may increase the likelihood of their seeking physician-assisted suicide. The relative lack of medical research on both ageing and female biology significantly limits the quality of medical care available to older women, whose longer life expectancy places many of them at risk for experiencing prolonged frailty and chronic health problems. Women experience depression about twice at frequently as men, and are at greater risk for inadequate pain management, both of which are associated with a desire to die. While there are ample reasons to suspect that gender plays an important role in increasing older women's vulnerability to physician-assisted suicide, data from the first year of legal physician-assisted suicide in Oregon do not show gendered patterns or gender bias. The reasons for this, and the importance of continuing to examine the impact of gender in the light of emerging data on physician-assisted suicide are examined. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-000413210 A |
| Classmark | BD: CT7: LK: CY: QT6: 64A: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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