California's End of Life Option Act went into effect on Thursday, allowing terminally ill patients to seek prescription for drugs to end their life. A doctor promptly opened a practice dedicated to the procedure.
Dr. Lonny Shavelson, 64, started operating his Bay Area End of Life Options, which may be the only such practice in the Bay Area and possibly throughout California.
Under the law, any doctor can opt not to participate in the End of Life Option Act. When this happens, Shavelson is available to be the attending doctor for aid-in-dying care.
"There will be a larger demand from patients who want to consider physician aid-in-dying than there are physicians who will be willing to work with them on it," Shavelson said, according to the Mercury News.
However, he said this does not automatically mean that he will give a terminally ill patient a prescription to end his life.
"When somebody says to a physician that they want to talk about the End of Life Option Act and says, 'Can you give me a prescription that will end my life?' I want them to tell me why," he said.
On his website, Shavelson said he is available under the law as consultant to physicians, consultant to patients who are thinking of the option and to those who have already decided to use aid-in-dying but whose doctors don't want to participate.
Shavelson charges $200 for the initial patient evaluation and an additional $1,800 if the patient qualifies under the law.
He claims that "a major goal of physicians is to make this (prescription) not happen."
Critics are not buying what he says.
Marilyn Golden, a disability rights advocate who is against the law, said, "It's disturbing because it suggests that if you set up a practice focused on assisted suicide, some people will get assisted suicide."
She said the law will lead to abuse of the elderly and poor.
"How dogged are they (doctors) going to be in their pursuit of solutions that address the patient's underlying reasons for requesting death?" she asked.
Shavelson said he will give his patient choices.
"Palliative care and hospice doctors will control and help patients die comfortably 99 percent of the time or more," he said.
