AS PEOPLE TRY to guess what would happen if physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia were legalized, they look hard at the few places in the world where assisted suicide, euthanasia, or both are openly practiced. So far, there have been only three such places: Oregon, Australia's Northern Territory, and the Netherlands (Holland). All of these places have issued statistics about the physician-assisted deaths that have taken place in their regions. Interpreting this information, however, has proved to be anything but easy.

Oregon's first year

In February 1999 the Oregon Department of Health issued a report about the physician-assisted suicides that had taken place under the Death with Dignity Act during the law's first year of operation. Twenty-three terminally ill people received prescriptions for lethal drugs, the report stated—about a third of the number who requested such drugs. Fifteen of the twenty-three used...