License suspension may slow doctor’s plans for Sellwood

By David F. Ashton

The Bee, Jul 7, 2010 (2 Reader comments)

Dr. Stuart Gordon Weisberg’s reported plan to open a Sellwood-area facility to accommodate terminally ill patients who wish to end their lives under Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” law has drawn a great deal of attention.

Any legal resident of our state, who meets the law’s conditions that he or she be terminally ill, when two physicians have agreed the individual is in their last six months of life, is entitled to a lethal dose of life-ending pharmaceutical drugs. That apparently seemed like a business opportunity for a Northwest Portland psychiatrist. (Psychiatrists are also medical doctors.)

The doctor said he has bought a house or similar building in the Sellwood area, at a so-far undisclosed location, to provide a package of services, including photographs and mood music — for both of which there is a hefty charge — to experience “Death with Dignity”. One part of Dr. Weisberg’s announced service package — becoming the patient’s “attending physician” for the death — may have hit a snag.

According to the Oregon Medical Association’s (OMA) Internet website, we found this listing under the doctor’s name: “06/24/2010 — Order Of Emergency Suspension. The Board issued an Order of Emergency Suspension on June 24, 2010. The Board took this action based on its immediate concerns regarding the safety and welfare of Licensee’s current and future patients.”

Section 2.2 of this order reads, “Licensee has recently manifested behavior indicative of grandiosity, compulsivity, and risk taking behavior that calls his ability to practice medicine competently and in conformity to the law into question.”

Perhaps surprising for a person who has announced on his website that he’s offered interviews to “CNN and NPR”, Dr. Weisberg was unwilling to talk about his plans with THE BEE. Repeated requests for an interview — both before and after the doctor’s apparent medical license suspension — have been met with no response.

Perhaps the situation will be clarified at his announced “dinner”, scheduled for July 21st at El Gaucho restaurant in the Benson Hotel.

Posted on the doctor’s website — www.endoflifeconsultants.com — is, “I’m hosting a dinner, at my own expense, to relay the gritty details. It will not be a treatise on ethics, psychology, religion or suicide. I feel like the people I invited are the minimum necessary to make this work without bumping my head up against a brick wall at every turn.”

Dr. Weisberg added to his website on June 10, “...I have righteousness on my side. I can’t imagine seeing a friend or relative suffering in agony, and feel powerless, impotent. If all it takes is courage, well I’m chock full of that. Strangely, I’ve been sleeping better than I have in years — perhaps that means something about this path. Clearly an adventure, but I feel like I considered dozens of variables and tried to find solutions before the problems occurred...”

He may have missed one. That was written before the apparent suspension of his medical license. At this point we have no verified information on how he may be sleeping now.

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