Dr. Mark Komrad:

I thank the Chair. I appreciate that. To respond to this most immediate point, in March the American Association of Suicidology backed away from that position, decided there was actually not a sufficient evidence base for being able to discern the difference between the two and decided for the time being it was going to retire that position and come back to study it. I wanted to make that point.

With regard to my style, one of the things that perhaps might be different is I am a practising clinician. Professor Battin is a philosopher and Dr. Jeanne is an administrative physician. I deal with suicide every single day; it is my bread and butter. I am a psychiatrist. As such I encounter in the trenches the profound implications for what it means to be a physician, what it means to be a psychiatrist, how it is an inversion of a fundamental ethos of what I have embraced and the values I profess as a professional, as a physician but especially as a psychiatrist. This is, therefore, quite anathema to me so the passion the committee is hearing from me is born of my professional life and my professional experience. As I said at the start of my remarks, I am a hybrid of an academic medical ethicist and a physician who cares very deeply about my individual patients and about the issue in our public health of suicide prevention, which is a problem that is out of control in our society. Statistics show since the introduction of these laws in Oregon, the percentage increase in suicide is much greater than the percentage increase in suicides in the nation at large.