ABSTRACT
In surveying the right-to-die landscape, see some variations of activism at work, pushing and prodding right-to-die questions onto the public-policy agenda in spite of the forces of restraint. Medical technology based on crude and often misguided principles, the home-based health-care model that emphasized palliation more than cure, and the late detection of fatal conditions all led to a relatively short period of infirmity before death took its toll. In effect, by creating an ethics committee to decide life-and-death questions, the Seattle physicians were throwing up their hands and acknowledging openly that medical professionals no longer had or wanted to have a corner on the decision-making market. Beginning with Belding Scribner's ethics committee, the general public became increasingly comfortable with the notion that people outside the medical fraternity were capable of providing some input regarding life-and-death situations.
