euthanasia
...rom healers to deliverers of death? Noel David Earley believes they do. The 48-year-old Rhode Island man has watched his muscles atrophy from Lou Gehrig's disease and is convinced that a doctor should be allowed to end his suffering without fear of prosecution. To acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, however, the difference between providing relief for severe suffering and aiding the purposeful taking of another life is profound. If the law permits doctors to cross that line, he argues, they and family members may pressure people who are dying to end their lives against their wills--to consider it their duty to die. When people ask for help in dying, experts say, it's usually not solely because of their illness. People who seek death are motivated by pain, despair and other things for which the proper solution is better care. B...