The National Association of Social Workers uses the term passive euthanasia to describe withdrawing or withholding of artificial or "medically inappropriate" life support in hopeless cases, while palliative care is the name NASW uses for medical intervention intended for pain relief but not cure. Compare this with the term voluntary active euthanasia, or a physician's "administering a lethal dose after a clearly competent patient makes a fully voluntary and persistent request for aid in dying" (NASW 58). NASW's definition of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) coincides with the AMA's definition of assisted suicide; however, whereas the AMA distinguishes between the act of suicide and the doctor's providing means and knowledge, the NASW says that "physician and the patient are both involved" (NASW 58), insofar as the physician complies with the specific request of the (mentally competent) patient.

The term right to die has a legal connotation to assisted suicide. However, it also has moral aspects, which can mean

(1) "a right to be allowed to die," which would be a right of non-interference and would be exer

Wennberg, unlike the AMA, defines assisted suicide as one in which the assistant not the patient performs the act, consistent with voluntary passive euthanasia. He discusses "the right to kill oneself through the agency of another," which could imply only knowledge and means but not the deed.

Nor is it sufficient to speak merely in terms of rights and decisions. A law permitting PAS would by no means resolve moral argument. Were that the case, Jack Kevorkian would not continue to make news, courts would not be faced with myriad appeals, and Dutch doctors making PAS decisions would not be discussing their guilt. On the other hand, the very prominence of euthanasia demands attention to partial interests of family, society, physician, patient. It is as if we as a society require pain in order to justify it on one hand and alleviate it on the other.

"Document Forbids Assisted Suicide." Los Angeles Times, Home Edition, 1 April 1995. 4B.

The right to die is also connected to the terms death with dignity and rational suicide, which imply mental competence and which has arisen since 1980 owing to the AIDS epidemic (Cox, passim; Dangelantonio, 57-62). Battin (300-302) identifies aspects of the right-to-die decision as a "rational structure" for the terminally ill: actively assuming control over one's death; waiting for cure, timing death during a predictable period of terminal decline, especially in AIDS cases; and the interests of others. Battin, who favors acceptance of a patient-directed right to die, suggests that physicians, mental-health counselors, and significant others can either reinforce (good) or disrupt (bad) the rational construct of the decision at every level of choice.

Larson, E.J. "Assisted Suicide is a Slippery Slope." Insight on the News, 29 Aug. 1994, 18.

Dangelantonio, A.J. "Physician-assisted Suicide: The Legal and P