Physician-assisted suicide occurs when the physician provides the patient with the means and/or knowledge to commit suicide(Death and Dying,91). Euthanasia is when the physician administers the death causing drug or

agent(Death and Dying,92). The most recent case is that of The State of Florida v. Charles Hall. Charles Hall is dying of AIDS and challenged the State of Florida to let him die by a self-administered lethal injection without fear of prosecution(http://www.rights.org/ deathnet/open.html). On January 31, 1997, a Judge ruled that Charles Hall could take his own life with the aid of a doctor. Senior Judge S. Joseph Davis, brought in from Seminole County, found that Florida’s strict privacy law and the equal protection clause in the U.S. Constitution entitled Hall, 35, and Dr. McIver to carry out an assisted death without fear of prosecution (Sun-Sentinel, 1A). On February 11, 1997, Charles Hall’s ruling was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court: he no longer has the right to end his own life. He will have to wait until May 9, 1997 until new arguments will be heard. Hall, who has been deemed mentally competent, contracted the virus in 1981 through a blood transfusion. Some of the complications he is encountering from the AIDS virus are arthritis, hepatitis, pneumonia and a brain cyst (http://www.rights.org/deathnet/

Some topics in this essay:
Fourteenth Amendment, Charles Hall, Dignity Act, Supreme Court, United America, , Beth Cruzan, Seminole County, Missouri Court, Dr McIver, terminally ill, charles hall, mentally competent, fourteenth amendment, own life, physician-assisted suicide, terminally ill patient, supreme court, measure 16, die government, life liberty property, blood transfusion, due process law, liberty property due, property due process,