This article discusses Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. It provides legal background & a six-step process for implementing physician-assisted suicide under the Act. The author questions the efficacy of the legislation, interpreting several safeguards in the Act as more nominal than real. These safeguards include the exclusion of the personal physician, lack of independent consultation during assessment, exclusion of family in decision-making, protection of people with reversible disorders, & the possibility that this law could be a magnet for those people who want death. (19 refs) (SC)