Although euthanasia is widely practiced in the Netherlands it remains technically illegal. In 1995 Australia's Northern Territory approved a euthanasia bill. It went into effect in 1996 and was overturned by the Australian parliament in 1997. One may ask, what is the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide? In euthanasia one person does something that directly kills another. For example a doctor gives a lethal injection to a patient. It assisted suicide, a person knowingly and intentionally provides the means or in some way helps a suicidal person killed himself or herself. For example, a doctor writes a prescription for poison, or someone who hooks up a face mask to a canister of carbon monoxide and then instructs the suicidal person on how to push a lever so that they will be gassed to death. For all practical purposes, any distinction between euthanasia and assisted suicide has been abandoned today. However passive euthanasia is different than other types of euthanasia. Passive euthanasia is the process of hastening the death of a person by withdrawing some sort of treatment. This includes removing life-support, stopping medical procedures and medications, stopping food and water to the patient and thus allowing him to die. Or not delivering C P R or other resuscitating treatment and allowing the person whose heart has stopped to die. Perhaps the most common form of passive euthanasia is to give a patient at large doses of morphine to control pain, in spite of the likelihood of the painkiller suppressing respiration and causing death earlier that it would otherwise have. Many states in the United States and other countries engage in this type of passive euthanasia to what is known as a health-care proxy or do not resuscitate order. These procedures are usually performed on the terminally ill, suffering patients, so that natural death will occur sooner. It is also opted for persons in a persistent vegetative state, individuals with massive brain damage or in a coma from which they cannot possibly regain conscious.
