Is "Right to Die" legal in the United States? If so, where? Who decides what illnesses warrant permission to die in this manner here in the United States? What considerations are factored in to the decision? Euthanasia, Greek for "good death," usually refers to an act in which one person kills another, at the request of and for the benefit of the one who dies. Suicide is the taking of one's own life. There is a blurring of the assisted suicide one terms assisted suicide and euthanasia. Euthanasiamercy killing, or person making it possible for another person to commit suicide actively assisting someone to terminate their life at their requestis not a new subject. As far back as Hippocrates, "the physician is discouraged from invading the atrium of death" and instructed that, in certain circumstances, "attempts to cure must yield to attempts to comfort." Hippocrates' treatise The Art instructs physicians "(1) to do away with the sufferings of the sick, (2) to lessen the violence of their diseases, and (3) to refuse to treat those who are over mastered by their diseases realizing that in such cases medicine is powerless." There are many arguments made against euthanasia: 1. There could be a mistake in diagnosis. 2. There may be difficulty in determining if euthanasia is voluntary for example, where there is an undue influence exerted on the patient by a member of the family and/or beneficiary of a will for financial reasons. 3. It could lead to a slippery slope; for example, with the growth of man- aged care, there may be more financial pressure to hasten death for those who are elderly, uneducated, on welfare, or disabled. 4. Altering the role of physicians to include the practice of killing patients would bring about a psychological upheaval in the physician- patient relationship, and patients would become less trustful of their physician's role as healer. In addition, some examples of euthanasia's slippery slope are from Holland, where there has been a right to die statute since 2002: A gay man in Holland who could not accept his sexuality sought to end his life; a sexual abuse victim who suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder sought to end her life, which prompted a second victim of sexual abuse to seek the same; and a woman who had a pathological fear of germs ended her life via the statute