In a 1988 Roper poll nearly 2000 Americans were asked about the legalization of physician-induced active euthanasia. When asked if a person has a painful and distressing terminal disease, do you think doctors should or should not be allowed to end the patient's life if there is no hope of recovery and the patient requests it, 58 percent were in favor, 27 percent were against, and 14 percent were undecided.

There is a movement afloat for the legalization and social acceptance of the practice of active euthanasia. The National Hemlock Society, whose motto is "Good Life, Good Death," promotes the right of people who are terminally ill to end their own lives in a planned manner. The "bible of euthanasia" published by the Hemlock Society, entitled Let Me Die Before I Wake, is a manual containing precise doses of drugs to be used in the lethal act.

Legislation has been proposed in California, The Humane and Dignified Death Act, which will permit a dying person to lawfully request a physician to help him die. With nearly three-fifths of Americans in favor, political moves already on the way, and a legal system accustomed to looking the other way, the right to die movement has us well on the way to legitimizing "prescribed death."

Euthanasia is a term meaning "good death." Though usually applied to acts of mercy killing, it has also had more abhorrent uses, such as in Nazi extermination programs. However, in the current age of medical technology and the increasing awareness of the many dilemmas presented to physicians and their seriously ill patients, euthanasia is under enormous debate by medical ethicists.

A distinction is made between "active" and "passive" euthanasia. Passive euthanasia is the withholding of potentially life-prolonging treatment from a terminally ill patient. An example of this would be choosing not to administer chemotherapy to a person with advanced cancer, or discontinuing resuscitation on an elderly man who has had a second heart attack. This is usually perceived as allowing a person to die. Active euthanasia is the deliberate act of ending a life usually by the administration of a lethal dose of a drug.

The appropriate use of passive euthanasia is quite well-accepted. There comes a time when we should stop resuscitation and other aggressive medical care when it is deemed futile. However, active euthanasia is crossing the line between allowing a person to die and killing.