Difference Between Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

By definition, euthanasia is the act of putting to death painlessly or allowing to die, as by withholding extreme medical measures, a person or animal suffering from an incurable, especially painful, disease or condition. What this really means is to kill someone on purpose to prevent them from suffering any longer. By definition, assisted suicide is a suicide facilitated by another person, especially a physician, who organizes the logistics of the suicide, as by providing the necessary quantities of a poison. In others words, a person who helps one commit suicide. They are different because with euthanasia, the doctor will carry out the patient’s death. For example, the doctor will physically inject the patient with the lethal substance. However, with assisted suicide, the patient will kill himself using the lethal injection which the doctor provided him or her. Therefore, with assisted suicide, the patient has complete control on when he or she dies whereas with euthanasia the doctor decides when the patient dies.



"Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide." Drexel.edu. Web. 01 May 2012.
          http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~cp28/euth1.htm.

"Euthanasia." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Web. 01 May 2012.
          http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/euthanasia.

"Assisted Suicide." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Web. 01 May 2012.
          http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/assisted suicide?s=t.