New study manipulates data on link between assisted suicide and suicide

Countries around the world are legalizing assisted suicide while seemingly ignoring the potential risks that come with it. One of those risks is an increase in overall suicide rates, which has been established in numerous other studies. Yet a new study claims there is no link between the two — and it manipulated the data to come to that conclusion.

Wesley Smith highlighted the study, published in the American Journal of Bioethics. “Some have hypothesized that changing attitudes toward medical aid in dying (MAID) contribute to increased suicide rates, perhaps by increasing interest in dying or the perceived acceptability of suicide,” the study began. “This would represent a strong criticism of MAID policies. We sought to evaluate the association between the legalization and implementation of MAID across the U.S. and changing suicide rates.”

The authors noted that they evaluated monthly death rates between 1995 and 2021, and “failed to find evidence that suicide rates were positively associated with MAID legalization or MAID implementation.” How? Well:

Because suicide rates vary by state, we constructed geographically-weighted regression models controlling for annualized state-level sociodemographic factors, such as racial distribution (percent Caucasian), average age, income levels, unemployment rates, rates of spiritual engagement, firearm ownership rates, gender ratios, and education levels. We applied a difference-in-difference analysis within our geographically-weighted models.

By manipulating the data, they were able to conclude that there is no link between assisted suicide and “regular” suicide, though they at least admitted that “[t]his finding contrasts with other studies that have reported a positive association between suicide rates and MAID.”

One study, from the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, found that legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) led to not only significant increases in EAS, but in “self-initiated” and “non-assisted” suicides as well, and among women especially.

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Another study, from the Southern Medical Journal, found that assisted suicide is related to an 8.9% increase in total suicide rates and, once controlled for demographic and socioeconomic factors, rates increased even further, by 11.79%. The suicide rate in Oregon increased between 1999-2010 by almost 50% – compared to less than 30% nationwide.

In addition, a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Mental Health Ethics also found that EAS was associated with increases in suicide rates in European countries that had legalized it when compared with neighboring countries without legalized assisted suicide.

“If we encourage assisted suicide, then we will encourage suicide,” Professor David Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, said. “If we legalize what is euphemistically called ‘assisted dying,’ then more people will kill themselves, and not only people with chronic or terminal illnesses. The evidence is out there, the threat is real. Belgium, which legalized euthanasia in 2002, currently has the highest suicide rate in Western Europe. In the Netherlands, which has more euthanasia than any country in the world, suicide is also rising. In America, suicide is rising more in states that have legalized physician-assisted suicide than it is in states that have resisted calls to change the law.”

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