When California's aid-in-dying law
takes effect this June, terminally ill patients who decide to end their
lives could be faced with a hefty bill for the lethal medication. It
retails for more than $3,000.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the
company that makes the drug most commonly used in physician-assisted
suicide, doubled the drug's price last year, one month after California
lawmakers proposed legalizing the practice.
"It's
just pharmaceutical company greed," said David Grube, a family doctor
in Oregon, where physician-assisted death has been legal for 20 years.
The
drug is Seconal, or secobarbital, its generic name. Originally
developed in the 1930s as a sleeping pill, it fell out of favor when
people died from taking too much, or from taking it in combination with
alcohol. But when intended as a lethal medication to hasten the death of
someone suffering from a terminal disease, Seconal is the drug of
choice.
"It works very quickly and very gently," Grube says. "People fall asleep with no complications. It's a very gentle passing."
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