I've never automatically suspected data or findings described as "surprising" of being faulty for that reason. I'd be interested in knowing whether more people are like me or like you on this point, Goldy.

I don't find these results surprising at all.

Me neither.

I have a friend who's a philosophy prof. He did a study of Oregon's law a number of years ago and this is exactly what he found. Those who chose to be in charge of their own death are the people who have been in charge of most everything their whole lives.

I'm with Goldy. Collecting data and reporting factually on that data is a really bizarre trick for a journalist. Who wouldn't be critical of such methods?!

The underlying problem, I think, is that poor people can't afford the level of health care that aid in dying requires.

The term "surprising" highlights the fact that the data are not what critics would expect. There's nothing misleading about that. In fact, it would probably give the data attention, which is good.

@6 has a point. If your only health care is through an emergency room, assisted suicide/death with dignity may be realistically out of reach.

This seems a pretty benign use of "surprised" to catch the reader's attention. I'm glad to hear the results are not surprising to the few who've been paying close attention in recent years, but to the many (readers like me) who've kept up only a little, it is surprrising. We\re not the thought leaders on this, just average voters who've supported changing the law. I'm guessing there are Massachusetts voters who will find this suprising and comforting too, helping resolve them to support their own state's upcoming effort to change their laws.

And like it or not, most of us know the topic as "assisted suicide" - any efforts under way to sway people to use new terms for it will need to progress a whole lot further if they want national headline writers to believe those other terms will attract readers better..

i dunno about the analogy - the one comparing the suicide drug to bullets. at least the bullets that a clerk sells you potentially have a use for something other than suicide (hunting, target practice, self-defense).
that big dose of drug...well, that's for killing yourself. no other use. the philosophy of this stuff is subtle, and somehow that analogy doesn't sit right with me.

On the other hand, posing the research in the terms that the anti-choice people like to use and presenting it as "surprising" makes it sound as though the research was done by an anti-choice person who was converted to pro-choice by the data. That makes it more convincing than hearing a pro-choice activist come out with a study confirming what they've been saying for years.

It's hardly surprising when you consider that religious people demand more extraordinary lifesaving measures when they're fatally ill than the nonreligious. Who's more likely to believe in a fake sky fairy? The poor or the rich? The well educated or the uneducated?

There's a delicious sort of irony that religious people are more terrified of death, but anyone who's aware of that fact shouldn't be surprised by how the death with dignity laws are penciling out.

While I see your point, Goldy, I'm honestly more offended by your use of "then" instead of "than" in the last sentence of your penultimate paragraph than I am by the linked article's use of the word "surprising."

If the data flies in the face of people who claim to be worried about poor and handicapped people, yet they still cling to that rationale, you might have to ask yourself if that's what they're really worried about. I mean, no one can actually say they don't want successful white people killing themselves and be taken seriously. I think for at least some opponents of these laws, the concern over it being compulsively applied to the less fortunate is a huge ruse.