Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are hardly new subjects on the human agenda. Though the profession of medicine has long condemned such practices — all the way back to Hippocrates — and even though opposition to them has been ratified time and again in different eras and in diverse societies, they have persistently lurked behind the scenes. Physicians have probably always, to some slight degree, practiced both of them — at least there have always been rumors to that effect — and, from time to time, public debate has broken out. In Great Britain, one can find efforts to change the law and medical practice going back over half a century, and in the United States legislation was pursued in various states as long as 50 years ago to change the laws that forbid euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Despite those efforts, and despite a long–standing minority of physicians and lay people interested to see a legal change, nothing much happened as a result of the earlier skirmishes. The laws remained unchanged and the medical profession continued to condemn such practices.

This time the agitation is different. Public opinion polls in the United States and Great Britain indicate a growing willingness on the part of both physicians and lay people to see a change in the law. Holland has already made euthanasia legally acceptable, and the state of Oregon, on the basis of a voter initiative referendum, has now legalized physician-assisted suicide (though not euthanasia).