These sensationalized events punctuate the very real political and social struggle over the issue of assisted suicide in the United States. The citizens of Oregon passed a law in November 1994 making physician-assisted suicide legal in that state, and earlier this month a United States Court of Appeals judge declared illegal a Washington state law prohibiting assisted suicide. The federal judge's ruling gives the physicians of California and eight other states in the West the right to prescribe lethal doses of medication to dying patients. Underlying these court dramas and political movements is a rapidly growing interest among the general public for assisted suicide. This support reflects a growing dissatisfaction with the standard medical care available to terminally ill patients in the United States.
Many people blame the medical system for blindly preserving the lives of all patients at any cost.
These critics feel that dying patients are all too often placed on life-sustaining technologies when doing so provides no medical benefits to the patient. In fact, artificially prolonging the lives of these patients seems to only prolong the suffering they are experiencing. Others feel that the growing interest in assisted suicide has its roots in something far deeper than this dissatisfaction with modern medical care. Phillipe Aries, a French historian of science, believe that modern Western society has become paranoid about death. In his book, Images of Man and Death, Aries points to how youth and perfect health are glorified in our society while the elderly and chronically ill are sent away to nursing homes and hospital beds to be forgotten.