Assisted suicide is defined as the act of killing oneself intentionally with the assistance of another who provides the means, the knowledge, or both. Examples of assisted suicide include the following:

* A physician gives the patient information about how to take a lethal dose of a drug and writes a prescription for the drug knowing that it is the intention of the patient to kill oneself with the drug. The patient takes the lethal dose and dies as a result.

* A friend of a partially-paralyzed woman goes to the pharmacy to get a prescription for barbi

Euthanasia, refusal of treatment, or treatment aimed at the alleviation of suffering that may shorten life are not considered assisted suicide. Euthanasia is not a form of assisted suicide because the person wishing to die does not accomplish the final act. The word 'euthanasia' comes from the Greek -- Eu, "good", and Thanatos, "death". Euthanasia, if one refers to the Greek origin of the word, means a good death, a gentle easy death. Euthanasia differs from physician assisted suicide because the physician actually performs the death-causing act after determining that the patient indeed wishes to end his or her life. Euthanasia has been referred to as: "the deliberate, rapid, and painless termination of life of a person afflicted with incurable and progressive disease that is leading inexorably to death. Euthanasia is the administration of death to the dying." Refusal of treatment applies to a patient's denial or discontinuance of life-support technology, such as a respirator or artificial nutrition. Administering drugs for the alleviation of suffering that may shorten life is when the physician prescribes drugs primarily for pain relief that may have the secondary effect of causing death.

The necessary and sufficient elements of assisted suicide are that the patient is the agent of death but death results from the assistance supplied by another person. Physician-assisted suicide is a doctor supplying a death-causing means, but the patient performs the act that brings about death.

One of the initial barriers many patients face is that by the time they reach a point of unbearable suffering; they are no longer able to commit suicide themselves and are now rendered helpless by laws that prevent assisted suicide. In 1993, Erwin Krickhahn suffered from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or Lou Gehrig's disease, and had nothing to hope for except prolonged pain and an excruciating death. Knowing this, he decided to end his life while he was still able to do so himself. However, it took so long to find a sympathetic doctor to prescribe the barbiturates he needed that he had already reached a point where he had to be fed by others. A lawyer advised his friends and family that if they were to help him ingest the pills then they would be subject to criminal prosecution. The lawyer also advised them that even serving him an alcoholic beverage to hasten the effect of the barbiturates, or

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