Drugs used for 'assisted dying' are untested with problems underreported

Though assisted suicide is purported to allow for a “planned and peaceful” exit, a “final, serene farewell” from this life, the reality can be far from idyllic. Physician-assisted death can be a "nightmare."

Key Takeaways:

• Assisted suicide and euthanasia are marketed as peaceful ways to die; however, recent stories indicate otherwise, including one of a woman who required three doses of coma-inducing drugs and the assistance of parademics to die.

• 'Assisted dying' drugs have not been studied to see how they affect the body in large doses.

• Complications associated with 'assisted dying' procedures are also underreported.

The Details:

Regardless of how assisted suicide and euthanasia are marketed, they are both horrific procedures that can cause physical suffering to the person scheduled to die and emotional turmoil for those who witness such a death.

Stories shared from those who have been there are clear indications that promoting suicide as an individual and societal good has always been a bad idea.

“Carefully constructed moment of peace” becomes “nightmare”

An assisted suicide horror story from the Netherlands made headlines in February, showing how wrong these acts can go.

Following a champagne toast, general practitioner Dr. Arjen Göbel injected a 48-year-old woman who had breast cancer with medication intended to induce a coma. Her friends and family looked on, and a pianist played background music as the doctor began. Per protocol, after the coma was induced, the doctor would then inject the woman with a paralytic medication to stop her muscles, prevent breathing, and cause her death. 

However, the woman did not go into a coma. 

Eventually, according to the article, she opened her eyes and asked her doctor, “Is something else happening or what?”

Medscape observed, “The carefully constructed moment of peace had shattered into an absurd nightmare.”  

It took three additional doses and the aid of several paramedics — disconcertingly called to assist not with saving a life but with ending it — before the woman died. 

When assisted suicide is “horrible” instead of “peaceful” 

In the United States, during a February 2026 interview with the Washington Post, California Governor Gavin Newsom described his role in his own mother’s assisted suicide back in the early 2000s.

Contrary to Newsom’s expectations, his mother’s breathing became labored. In stark contrast to the peaceful, quiet drifting away he and his sister had expected, his mother’s breathing became so labored that his sister had to leave the room, causing her to miss their mother’s last breath. 

Newsom told the Post interviewer with obvious emotion, “I hated her for it — to be there for the last breath — for years,” he said. “I want to say it was a beautiful experience. It was horrible.”

Can 'assisted dying' practitioners deliver “peaceful” death?

Assisted suicide activists craft careful narratives about peaceful, easy deaths for patients suffering intolerable pain, assuring skeptics of adequate safeguards to prevent coercion or inappropriate approval. 

Medscape pushed back on that assertion, questioning whether “the medical system [is] truly equipped to deliver that promise” before acknowledging outright that ”[a] profound lack of regulatory oversight and standardization across the continent has led to a patchwork of protocols that rely more on trust than on transparent evidence.” 

One reason activists’ claims may be overstated is that the medications used for assisted suicide haven’t been studied for the purpose of causing death.

According to Medscape, some 97% of assisted suicide cases involve a doctor administering the medications, as opposed to the individual ingesting a lethal liquid. Typically, as per protocols in the Netherlands, where assisted suicide was first legalized, doctors administer a one-two punch of IV medications intended to cause coma and then to paralyze the breathing muscles. 

The medication to cause a coma is often an anesthetic called propofol. Its predecessor in assisted suicide protocols, thiopental, fell out of favor after its name was associated with prisoner executions, according to Medscape. Ironically, the title of the most recent Dutch procedural manuals for assisted suicide (which serve as the model for assisted suicide protocols across the world) translates to “execution of euthanasia and assisted suicide” in English. 

The second drug, given after the person is in a coma, is a paralytic medication (also known as a neuromuscular blocker), relaxing the muscles in the body so completely that the person can no longer breathe. 

Disturbingly, retired palliative medicine doctor Claud Regnard, MD, told Medscape in 2025:

“There isn’t a single regulatory drug authority anywhere in the world that has assessed and approved assisted dying drugs [in the doses required for this purpose].” 

No data on how the drugs affect the body in large doses

As noted in the 2026 Medscape article, we don’t know exactly how these medications originally intended for anesthesia or epilepsy treatment or other purposes can cause death.

Though the ways these medications work at therapeutic doses for their originally intended purposes are known, their effects in the body at much higher doses have not been studied. There’s been no formal exploration, for instance, of the possibility that individuals may suffocate to death due to fluid and blood buildup in the lungs from the assisted suicide drugs. 

Regnard acknowledged to Medscape, “We extrapolate from therapeutic doses, but we have no proper data on what happens at lethal doses. That’s not science–that’s guesswork.” He affirmed, “You wouldn’t allow this in any way with any other sort of drugs.”  

There’s also an astonishing lack of oversight regarding the reporting of complications like the one experienced by Dr. Göbel’s patient with breast cancer. This is in part because existing regulations are checkboxes for the legal protection of the doctor, not for ensuring the patient’s peaceful departure from this world. 

In a 2023 Oregon report, shoddy reporting abounded, with fully 72% of the 367 documented assisted suicide cases missing complication data. 

Globally, data is also missing:

• Western Australia keeps no record of complications from self-administered suicides. Of physician-assisted suicides, there were 18 complications reported for 451 deaths between 2024 and 2025.

• All other Australian states or territories, as well as New Zealand, refrain from sharing complication data.

• Swiss euthanasia organization Dignitas and the German Health Ministry declined to share complication data with Medscape.

• Italy does not collect complications data at all.   

Two doctors who participate in euthanasia shared their clinical experience with Medscape, with one insisting that he hadn’t observed a complication in any of the almost 5,000 cases he’d personally overseen.

The other doctor, however, acknowledged, “Even with precautions, the process isn’t always smooth. There can be moments of discomfort and unexpected reactions – things we simply cannot control.” 

We know that, at least in some cases, all does not go smoothly, given that the 2021 Dutch assisted suicide procedural manuals mentioned above introduced new content on “Procedure if no adequate lowering of consciousness occurs or patient does not die."

The Bottom Line:

There’s much we don’t know about the medications used to intentionally end lives via assisted suicide and euthanasia. What we do know suggests that, at least in some cases, individuals do not simply drift off to sleep and never wake up.