Assisted Suicide A Patient's Right In 1994, the people of the state of Oregon approved the Death with Dignity Act which, for the first time in the U.S., allowed patients with certain diseases to determine the manner and time of their deaths; doctors are permitted to prescribe lethal combinations of drugs under circumstances detailed by a patient. Certain parameters were drawn in the law in order to avoid potential abuse of the system. Thus, only specific diseases are covered under the act, and there is a time limit as to the proximity to the estimated end of life; patients must have one of several terminal illnesses, and it must be verified that they are estimated to be six or fewer months away from natural death.