[link|http://www.nrlc.org/news/1999/NRL1199/kate.html|Daughter decides on mother's behalf life not worth living]

Step on slippery slope: the mentally incapacitated are not fit to live.
Implicit assumption: One person can decide on another's behalf whether his life is worth living.

Excerpt:

A lethal dosage was authorized by a managed care executive for an elderly cancer patient whose daughter was aggressively pushing for her death, despite the findings of a consulting psychiatrist that the woman's memory loss meant she lacked the mental "capacity to weigh options about
assisted suicide" and that she did "not seem to be explicitly pushing for this," according to an Oregon newspaper report.

On October 17, a story in the Portland paper The Oregonian told the tale of Kate Cheney, an 85-year-old woman with growing dementia. The psychiatrist who declared her ineligible for assisted suicide diagnosed her as cognitively impaired, noting that she could not remember recent
events and people, including the names of her hospice nurses or her new doctor. The psychiatrist noted that her family appeared to be pressuring her.

When Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide by referendum in 1994, its proponents touted what they called its safeguards. If there was doubt about a person's competence, they emphasized, the law required the individual to be referred for a psychiatric evaluation.

But the "safeguard" of the opinion evaluating Cheney was apparently disregarded. Another opinion was sought, this time from a psychologist who wrote that the patient could not remember when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, although it had only been a few months ago. The
psychologist also wrote that the patient's "choices may be influenced by her family's wishes and her dau-ghter, Erika, may be somewhat coercive," according to the Oregonian. Nevertheless, this psychologist said she was competent. Presented with this opinion, the managed care company
executive authorized giving Kate Cheney lethal pills, she took them, and she died.

"Doctor-shopping" is apparently a common practice to evade the " safeguards" that the law's proponents said would avert legal resort to suicide by the mentally ill. At least five of the fifteen deaths in the first year of the law's operation were of people who had first been turned down by at least one doctor, according to official reports.