WHAT WILL HAPPEN to the debate about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in the twenty-first century? Will interest in this issue die down or grow? How will changes in medicine and society change people's feelings about it"

Some experts think the debate has served its purpose and therefore will become less important in the future. "The clamor for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide pushed medical professionals to improve end-of-life care," says Ezekiel J. Emanuel. "With those changes established, the assisted-suicide movement itself may be in terminal condition." Others, however, think that as the world's population continues to grow and an ever-increasing number of people live into old age, arguments about the right to die will become more intense. Burke Baulche, director of the department of medical ethics at the National Right to Life Committee, says, "There is no question that the struggle...