Oregon Death with Dignity Political Action Fund Board of Directors

Tweet

Print

STEVE TELFER, President, is a long-time lobbyist working on state and national levels and participating in a variety of state and local government task forces. Telfer has served as Chair of the Oregon Public Employees' Retirement System and Vice Chairman of the Oregon Investment Council. He was also a member of the Oregon Workers' Compensation Management Labor Advisory Committee. Telfer joined the healthcare field in 1987 as Vice President of Good Samaritan Hospital and Health Center in Portland. He also played a prominent role in the creation of Legacy Health System.

DANIEL A. GREGORIE, MD, MBA, Vice President, has practiced as an independent consultant with a principal focus on the leadership, governance, business strategy, and organizational effectiveness of health care organizations, particularly physician led enterprises since the end of 1997. From June of 1989 until its acquisition by Humana in October of 1997, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of ChoiceCare, a market-leading health plan and public company in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a board certified specialist in internal medicine, having earned his medical degree from Tufts University and his undergraduate degree from Duke University. He also holds a master’s degree in Management Science from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has served on the boards of a number of proprietary, venture capital funded, non profit, and publicly traded companies.

CAROL PRATT, PhD, JD, Treasurer, is a practicing attorney in the Portland office of an international law firm, K&L Gates LLP. Carol’s legal practice focuses on FDA law, health law and bioethics. Before becoming a lawyer, Carol was a neuroscientist and conducted research focusing on spinal cord function for about 20 years at the National Institutes of Health, Purdue University and the Dow Neurological Sciences Institute. Carol was living in Portland, OR in 1994 when Oregon passed by ballot initiative the nation’s first, pioneering Death With Dignity law. The Death with Dignity campaign and subsequent legal challenges to Oregon’s law inspired her to become a lawyer, which she did in 1998. Carol is the author of the article, Efforts to Legalize Physician Assisted Suicide in New York, Washington, and Oregon: A Contrast Between Judicial and Initiative Approaches -– Who Should Decide? 77 (4), Oregon Law Review, 1027-1124 (1998). She joined the board of the Oregon Death with Dignity Legal Defense and Education Center in 2000 and has continued since then as a board member of the Death with Dignity National Center.

ELI D. STUTSMAN, JD, Secretary, is a practicing attorney in Portland, Oregon. He co-authored the Oregon Death with Dignity Act in 1993 and served as the lead political and legal strategist during the 1994 campaign to pass the law and again during the 1997 campaign to defeat its repeal by the State Legislature. Stutsman successfully defended the Death with Dignity law in the first federal court challenge spanning 1994 to 1997. See Lee v. State of Oregon,107 F.3d 1382 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 927 (1997). He later prevailed against the United States Attorney General and the Drug Enforcement Administration in a second round of federal court litigation spanning 2001-2006, in which he won an injunction against the United States Attorney General on behalf of a physician and a pharmacist, both threatened with criminal sanctions. On January 17, 2006, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the physician, pharmacist, and the State of Oregon. See Oregon v. Ashcroft, 192 F.Supp.2d 1077 (D.Or. 2002), 368 F.3d 1118 (9th Cir. 2004), Gonzales v. Oregon, 126 S.Ct. 904 (2006). Stutsman co-founded Oregon Right to Die in 1993, the political action committee that passed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act into law. He was the founding president of the Oregon Death with Dignity Legal Defense and Education Center in 1995 (which later merged with the Death with Dignity National Center), as well as the Oregon Death with Dignity Political Action Fund, founded in 2001. In 2007, Stutsman authored the Washington Death with Dignity Act, passed into law by Washington voters on November 4, 2008.

CHARLES "BUZZY" BARON, LLB, PhD, Officer, recently retired from his position as a Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, where he taught courses in Constitutional Law, Law, Medicine and Public Policy, and Life and Death Decision-making and the Rule of Law. He has lectured and published extensively in the U.S. and Europe on constitutional law and patients' rights. Baron's articles on assisted dying include "A Model State Act to Authorize and Regulate Physician-Assisted Suicide," Harvard Journal on Legislation (1996: Vol. 33), "Pleading for Physician-Assisted Suicide in the Courts," Western New England Law Review (1997: Vol. 19), "Assisted Dying." Trial (July 1999: Vol. 35, No. 7), and "Physician Assisted Suicide Should Be Legalized and Regulated," Boston Bar Journal (November/December 1997: Vol. 41). Baron also authored the chapter entitled "Hastening Death: The Seven Deadly Sins of the Status Quo" in Physician-Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice (2004: Johns Hopkins University Press, Tim Quill and Peggy Battin, editors). Baron was also the author of the Law Professors' amicus curiae brief in the two assisted-dying cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997—Vacco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg.

MIDGE LEVY, ACSW, Officer, has a background in medical and geriatric social work, at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and social work administration, at a Group Health Cooperative Home Care and Hospice program. She worked on Initiative 119, Washington State's Death with Dignity Campaign, which would have legalized physician-assisted dying for qualified, terminally ill patients. Levy was a consultant to the National Association of Social Workers on their End of Life Policy developed in 1993. Ms. Levy is also Vice President of Compassion & Choices of Washington.

DAVID J. MAYO, PhD, Officer, was Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Associate of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He also served on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Suicidology and co-authored Suicide: The Philosophical Issues. He received his undergraduate degree in philosophy from Reed College, and his PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. He began teaching at the University of Minnesota in 1966 and became interested in bioethics in 1974, when he participated in a six week summer seminar in bioethics sponsored by the Council for Philosophical Studies. In 1985 he was a Visiting Exxon Fellow in Clinical Medical Ethics at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. During leaves from his position at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Professor Mayo has taught at Macalester College in St. Paul, and at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and held Visiting Scholar appointments at both Macalester College and the School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University. He has served on the boards of directors of the American Association of Suicidology, the Midwest Chapter of the Hemlock Society, and the Death with Dignity Political Action Fund. His work in bioethics has focused largely on issues related to death and dying, privacy, and AIDS. Mayo is widely published on the subjects of death and dying.

TIMOTHY E. QUILL, MD, Officer, is Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester (New York) where he directs the Center for Palliative Care and Clinical Ethics and is a practicing palliative care physician. Quill has lectured widely and published numerous articles, including a 1991 New England Journal of Medicine article about "Diane," a dying patient who requested assistance in dying. Quill is the author of four books, Physician Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice (Johns Hopkins University Press, co-edited with Margaret Battin), Caring for Patients at the End of Life: Facing an Uncertain Future Together (Oxford University Press), A Midwife Through the Dying Process, Stories of Healing and Hard Choices at the End of Life (Johns Hopkins University Press), and Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge (W.W. Norton). He was the lead physician plaintiff in the New York State legal case challenging the law prohibiting physician aid in dying—Quill v. Vacco.

BETTY ROLLIN, Officer, is a television correspondent—previously with NBC News and currently with PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly—and a best-selling author. Two of her six books, First, You Cry and Last Wish, have been made into television movies. First, You Cry describes Rollin's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy; Last Wish, which has been published in 18 countries, recounts the story of her mother's request for help in dying and began for her what has been a 20-year involvement in the death-with-dignity movement. Rollin's most recent book is Here's the Bright Side: Of Failure, Fear, Cancer, Divorce and Other Bum Raps. A native New Yorker, Rollin is a graduate of Fieldston Ethical Culture School in Riverdale, NY and Sarah Lawrence College. She and her husband, Dr. Harold M. Edwards, a mathematician, live in Manhattan.

Please also see Death with Dignity National Center's board of directors.

Defend dignity. Take action.

You are the key to ensuring well-crafted Death with Dignity laws for all Americans. With your financial and volunteer help, the Death with Dignity National Center, a 501(c)(3), non-partisan, non-profit organization, has been the leading advocate in the death with dignity movement. Member contributions helped us pass a new Death with Dignity law in Washington, defend the Oregon law, and provide education and outreach programs for the vitality of the death with dignity movement.

Make a Donation

Your donation helps us continue to advocate for the right of the terminally ill to die with dignity.

Stay Connected

Sign up for action alerts about how you can help us in the fight for Death with Dignity laws and legislation.

Additional ways to stay in touch:

Who We Are

The Oregon Death with Dignity Political Action Fund partners with the Death with Dignity National Center and conducts lobbying and political activities in order to achieve the enactment of Death with Dignity laws in other states.

Learn more about efforts to bring dignity to people around the nation.

History

The Oregon Death with Dignity Political Action Fund (the Fund) began in 1993 as Oregon Right to Die, a state political action committee, formed to help pass the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. The Death with Dignity Act was tied up by legal challenges and a legislative repeal effort until the fall of 1997.

In late 2001, Oregon Right to Die changed its name and tax status to become the Oregon Death with Dignity Political Action Fund. This effort was undertaken so the organization could more easily combine its political strengths with the Death with Dignity National Center. Together these organizations are positioned to lead the charge in the death with dignity movement.

Learn more about the Fund and our family of organizations.

Patients & Families

The Death with Dignity National Center was formed out of a profound commitment to the idea that personal end-of-life decisions should be made solely between a patient and a physician. We are pleased to provide you with support and information as you face the difficult challenges ahead.

Access resources for patients and families.

Research Center

We have compiled a comprehensive collection of legal briefs, journal articles, and newspaper clippings. We invite you to explore the wide array of information we have collected throughout our history.

Dive into the archives of the National Center.