Thus, decades before the discovery of penicillin (1928) and the development of mechanical respirators (1929), dialysis (1945), and other life-sustaining technologies, serious public discussions of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia took place in the United States (and also in European countries). These discussions were couched in the same language we use today—"patients' rights," "the relief of pain and suffering," "the loss of dignity."

Indeed, rather than creating a perceived need for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, advances in life-sustaining technology should help to obviate them. Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Myth No. 2: Legalizing physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia is widely endorsed. "There is unquestionably growing popular support for permitting doctors to provide assistance to terminally ill patients who wish to hasten their deaths" (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals).

Yes, polls show that a majority of Americans support physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia—indeed, have supported legalizing them for almost twenty-five years. But the support is neither strong nor deep. Careful analysis of the polling data suggests that there is a "rule of thirds": a third of Americans support legalization under a wide variety of circumstances; a third oppose it under any circumstances; and a third support it in a few cases but oppose it in most circumstances.

Americans tend to endorse the use of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia when the question is abstract and hypothetical. One formulation that has been used for almost fifty years and elicits widespread agreement is "When a person has a disease that cannot be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient's life if the patient and his or her family request it?" The question has several flaws, the most important one being that "to end the patient's life" is vague and specific neither to physician-assisted suicide nor to euthanasia. The phrase could mean simply stopping life-sustaining technologies that are keeping the patient alive, which is already legal.

Other, more carefully designed questions can elicit majority support for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, but only when patients are described as terminally ill and experiencing unremitting physical pain. Support dwindles when the public is asked about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in virtually any other situation. Two thirds of Americans oppose physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia when a terminally ill patient has no pain but wants to die because of concern about being a burden to his or her family, or because he or she finds a drawn-out dying process meaningless. The most accurate characterization of the survey data is that a significant majority of Americans oppose physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia except in the limited case of a terminally ill patient with uncontrollable pain.

Myth No. 3: It is terminally ill patients with uncontrollable pain who are most likely to be interested in physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia. "In the case of a terminally ill adult who ends his life in the final stages of an incurable and painful degenerative disease, in order to avoid debilitating pain and a humiliating death, the decision to commit suicide is not senseless, and death does not come too early" (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals).