Dr. Jack Kevorkian is the largest advocate of euthanasia in American history, and he began the widespread conversation about end of life options.
He’s known to have said “Dying is not a Crime,” and his advocacy led in part to Oregon’s passing of the Death with Dignity act, which made Oregon’s jurisdiction one of the first in the world that allows terminally ill patients to determine the time of their own death. In euthanasia, the attending doctor administers the final lethal dose. In PAS (physician-assisted suicide), the attending doctor merely provides the final lethal dose and the patient administers it (PAS is the one to have been recently legalized in California). It bears noting here that there are a number of terms associated with end of life rights, but we’ll deal with PAS primarily.