In 1975, a 21-year-old woman named Karen Ann Quinlan suffered a respiratory arrest that caused severe and brain damage and left her in a coma. Doctors had informed Karen's parents that a recovery was extremely unlikely. Her parents requested that her life support be removed but the hospital refused. In 1976, after a lengthy legal battle, her parents got a court order that allowed them to remove the artificial respirator that was thought to be keeping their daughter alive. Karen lived until 1985 without ever regaining consciousness. This case was the beginning of the debate in whether terminally ill or comatose patients should have the right to die by euthanasia.
             In a different situation, on June 4, 1990, Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease, deliberately ended her life with the help of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian was a retired pathologist in Michigan who had devised a way for a person to self- administer a lethal dose of drugs to end life. Janet's husband and a friend of hers supported her decision to end her life rather than "put my family or myself through the agony of this terrible disease."
             Euthanasia is defined, as the deliberate act undertaken by one person with the intention of ending the life of another person in order to relieve that persons suffering where that act is the cause of death. Euthanasia is derived from the Greek word for "good death." It was originally referred to as intentional mercy killing. When medical advances made prolonging the lives of dying or comatose patients possible, the term euthanasia was also used to describe a lack of action to prevent death. Many cultures have accepted euthanasia in some form. In ancient Greece and Rome, helping others to die was allowed in some situations.
             Euthanasia can be performed in many different ways. The most frequent way would most likely be from injecting a chemical into the body by intravenous. Anoth...