PORTLAND - The number of Oregonians who killed themselves with a prescription allowed under a landmark assisted suicide law increased slightly last year, according to an annual report.

The sixth-year report on the Oregon Death with Dignity Act showed that 42 terminally ill patients took a lethal dose of drugs after consulting with their doctors in 2003.

It was an increase of just more than 10 percent from 2002, when 38 people killed themselves with drugs prescribed by their doctors under the law.

"This is an increase, but the number remains small in comparison to the average 31,000 Oregon deaths every year," said Dr. Mel Kohn, state epidemiologist.

Supporters of the law say the figures shows it is working as intended.

"Few assisted deaths, no substantial complications - more evidence of a safe, careful medical practice," said Barbara Coombs Lee, the author of the law and president of Compassion in Dying.

The Death with Dignity Act has survived challenges in federal court and a repeal effort. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no constitutional right to assisted suicide but states have the authority to pass such a law.

Voters had approved the law in 1994 but the first full year it was in effect was 1998, following the high court ruling and overwhelming voter rejection of a repeal in 1997.

Attorney General John Ashcroft lost the latest challenge to the law last year but he has appealed. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was expected to rule before the end of 2003 but a decision is still pending with no word on when it is expected.

Opposition has faded as the law has been put into practice, but critics still argue it violates the ancient oath doctors take from the Greek physician Hippocrates, swearing to never give "deadly medicine" to any patient.

"Doctors are under siege in this upside down ethical position we're placed in," said Dr. Kenneth Stevens, a cancer specialist and president of Physicians for Compassionate Care.

"We're told not to do harm but killing a patient is not only the greatest harm, it's abandonment at death," Stevens said.

The Oregon law requires at least two doctors to agree that a patient has only six months to live but still is capable of making a decision to request a lethal prescription. There is a 15-day waiting period and the patient must administer the drug to himself or herself.

Over the years, dozens of patients and their families have talked about the importance of having both a choice and a legal right to decide whether they want to end their own lives when there is no hope. Last year, Florence Tauber of Beaverton was among those families.

Her husband, Al Tauber, took a lethal prescription in January 2003 after suffering from chronic lymphatic leukemia for more than a decade. He was 79.

"This was loving, caring decision that was made with all the love and kindness a human can conceive of at a time like that," Florence Tauber said.

When he was first diagnosed with cancer, her husband complained there was no legal or good way to commit suicide if life became unbearable or if he lost physical control, Tauber said.

"He was a creative, vital man who exercised and took care of himself. He was very, very interested in everything," she said. But as the disease took its toll on her husband, a former computer systems manager, "he just wasn't interested any more."

Without the assisted suicide law, the death certificate would have listed suicide and not leukemia as the cause, Tauber said.

"Suicide has the connotation of desperation, but it doesn't exist in this case because you have to make the decision," she said.

The report released today by the Oregon Department of Human Services also lists demographic information about the terminally ill patients who chose assisted suicide.

The study noted:

n Rates of death by lethal prescription were highest among patients suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, HIV or AIDS, and cancer.

n The number of prescriptions increased from 58 in 2002 to 67 in 2003. These numbers have increased every year since 1998, when 24 prescriptions were written.

n The main reasons patients chose assisted suicide were concerns about losing autonomy, a decreasing ability to participate in activities that make life enjoyable and loss of dignity.

n Patients more likely to participate in 2003 tended to be younger and highly educated, and to live west of the Cascades in comparison to other Oregonians dying of the same illnesses.

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On the Net:

Oregon Department of Human Services: http://www.dhs.state.or.us