The Price of Mercy : Legalizing Medical Euthanasia

This article is written by Sourya Banerjee.

"I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel"

                                                                                                            

-The Hippocratic Oath.

Pulling the plug: (Euthanasia)
Who is to decide

    Traditionally for over 700 years, the Anglo-American common law tradition has punished or otherwise disapproved of both suicide and assisting suicide. That suicide remained a grievous, though nonfelonious, wrong is confirmed by the fact that colonial and early state legislatures and courts did not retreat from prohibiting assisting suicide. Swift, in his early 19th century treatise on the laws of Connecticut, stated that "if one counsels another to commit suicide, and the other by reason of the advice kills himself, the advisor is guilty of murder as principal." (From Z. Swift, A Digest ofthe Laws of the State of Connecticut 270 (1823). The right to life and to personal security is not only