Right To Die.

During the 1990s Dr. Jack Kevorkian forced a major ethical controversy into the public arena. Although some physicians had for years quietly provided painkillers in amounts they (and their terminally ill patients) knew would shorten life, Kevorkian, a retired Michigan pathologist, publicly and openly assisted in the suicide of his "patients." He even introduced a device called the "Suicide Machine." In June 1990 Kevorkian helped Janet Elaine Adkins of Portland, Oregon, end her own life. The fifty-four-year-old Adkins had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and preferred to take her own life rather than slowly lose her mind. Kevorkian's actions put the debate about such controversial decisions into the open, and even though he was widely and harshly criticized, the public no longer wished to leave such matters in the hands of physicians. Many doctors, fearing the legal consequences of inaction, often ignored...