An early advocate for physician-assisted suicide used the now-legal procedure to end his own life Tuesday. Peter Rasmussen, an Oregon oncologist, was one of the first, and few, physicians who spoke out in support of Oregon’s controversial Death with Dignity ballot measure in the 1990s — threatening his career and reputation to do so.
Rasmussen’s advocacy helped Oregon become the first state to allow physicians to prescribe lethal medications to terminally-ill patients in 1997, despite multiple state and federal attempts to block it.
Rasmussen had glioblastoma, the same type of malignant brain tumor that motivated California resident Brittany Maynard to move to Oregon and end her own life last year under the state’s Death with Dignity Act. His wife, Cindy Rasmussen, told Salem’s Statesman Journal that her husband died peacefully 30 minutes after taking the medicine.
“Most of us understand that death is a non-negotiable part of life,” Rasmussen wrote in a Sacramento Bee op-ed in support of California’s End of Life Option Act earlier this year — a bill modeled off of Oregon’s law. “Most of us don’t fear death nearly as much as the suffering that may be endured as we approach that death.”
Last year, Rasmussen sat down with the Statesman Journal to talk about his diagnosis.
“We all realize we’re going to die, and the dying part is often relativity simple,” he said. “There are people — who knows I may be one of them — that decide that their quality of life is not high enough to continue. And so to have that option available is valuable to me.”
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Rasmussen was able to see the California bill signed into law a month before he died. California became the fifth and largest state to legalize aid-in-dying, and advocates have said it will likely spur other states to readdress the issue.
Already, 25 states and the District of Columbia have considered a similar bill in the 2015 legislative session — and New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island have the greatest likelihood of enacting legislation in the near-term, according to advocates.
A 2002 CBS news interview with Rasmussen sums up his lasting views best: “I think there are people who are perfectly sane, who know what their future holds for them, and then don’t want that. Those are the ones who want the death with dignity.”