ABSTRACT
With technological change, norms about how and when to die are in flux. A recent New York Times-CBS poll reported that 53 percent of the respondents agree that doctors should be allowed to assist a severely ill person to commit suicide. Proponents of euthanasia demand that patients should be allowed to choose the time and method of their death. The equivocal status of euthanasia in the Netherlands makes systematic analysis of the incidence, prevalence, and characteristics of those patients who opt to have their lives ended impossible. Since the 1970s, many Dutch physicians have violated the ban on euthanasia, and courts have set forth conditions that excuse the act. As Richard Kalish pointed out over two decades ago, if the United States can be said to have a common religion, it is human health with physicians as its high priests.
