- Jack Kevorkian
Jack Kevorkian, M.D. (born May 20, some sources say May 26, 1928) is a controversial American pathologist. He was born in Pontiac, Michigan to Armenian-American parents. He is most noted for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicide and claims to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He has famously stated, "dying is not a crime." It was previously thought that his activities earned him the nickname of Dr.
- Philip Nitschke
Philip Nitschke (born 1947) is an Australian medical doctor, Humanist and founder of the pro-euthanasia group "Exit". He successfully campaigned to have a legal euthanasia law passed in Australia's Northern Territory and assisted four people in ending their lives before the law was overturned by the Federal government. Since then, he has provided advice to others who have ended their lives, mostly notably Nancy Crick, aged 69. On May 22, 2002, Crick, …
- Robert Latimer
Robert William "Bob" Latimer (born March 13, 1953), a Canadian canola and wheat farmer, was convicted of murder for the killing of his daughter Tracy (November 23, 1980-October 24, 1993). This case sparked a national controversy on the definition and ethics of euthanasia, and two Supreme Court decisions, "R. v. Latimer" (1997), on section 10 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and later "R.
- Diane Pretty
Diane Pretty (November 15, 1958 - May 11, 2002) was a British woman from Luton, Bedfordshire, who became the focus of a debate about assisted dying in Britain during the early part of the 21st Century. Diane Pretty was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, and when this disease became advanced such that she was unable to move or communicate easily, she wished to end her life, with assistance from her husband.
- Piergiorgio Welby
Piergiorgio Welby (Rome, 26 December 1945 - 20 December 2006) was an Italian poet, painter and activist whose three-month-long battle for a right to die led to a debate about euthanasia in his country.
- Nancy Cruzan
Nancy Beth Cruzan (July 20, 1957-December 26, 1990) was a figure in the right-to-die movement. After an auto accident left her in a persistent vegetative state, her family fought in courts for three years, as far as the U.S. Supreme Court, to have her feeding tube removed. The Court denied the family's request citing lack of evidence of Cruzan's wishes, but the family ultimately prevailed by providing additional evidence.
- Karen Ann Quinlan
Karen Ann Quinlan (March 29 1954 - June 11 1985) was an important figure in the history of the right to die debate in United States. When she was 21, Quinlan fell unconscious after coming home from a party, and lapsed into a persistent vegetative state. After she was kept alive on a ventilator for several months without improvement, her parents requested the hospital to discontinue active care and allow her to die.
- Kevin Andrews
Kevin James Andrews (born 9 November 1955), is an Australian politician and is currently the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. He was previously Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations in the Howard Government from 7 October 2003 to 23 January 2007. Andrews has been a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives since a 1991 by-election, representing the Division of Menzies in Victoria.
- Karl Brandt
Karl Brandt was selected the personal physician of Adolf Hitler in August 1944 and headed the administration of the Nazi euthanasia program from 1939. As Major General Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation he was involved in human experimentation, along with his deputy Werner Heyde and others. Brandt was born in Mülhausen in the then German Alsace-Lorraine territory (now Mulhouse, France). He became a medical doctor in 1928. He joined the Nazi Party in January 1932, …
- Joseph Fletcher
Joseph Fletcher (1905-1991) was an American professor who founded the theory of situational ethics in the 1960s, and was a pioneer in the field of bioethics. Fletcher was a leading academic involved in the topics of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics, and cloning. Ordained as an Episcopal priest, he later renounced his belief in God and became an atheist. Fletcher was a prolific professor, teaching, participating in symposia, and completing ten books, …
- Nancy Crick
Nancy Crick (died May 21 2002 aged 69) was an Australian woman whose death was assisted by euthanasia advocate Dr. Philip Nitschke. The media used her case as a focal point for euthanasia debate in Australia. She worked as a barmaid for 30 years at the Cumberland Arms Hotel in Sydney Road, Brunswick.
- Alfred Hoche
Alfred Erich Hoche (August 1, 1865 in Wildenhain (Torgau) - May 16, 1943 in Baden-Baden) was a German psychiatrist well-known for his writings about eugenics and euthanasia.
- Karl Binding
Karl Ludwig Lorenz Binding was a German jurist known as a promoter of the theory of retributive justice. His influential book, "Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwertem Lebens" ("Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living"), written together with the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, was used by the Nazis to justify their T-4 Euthanasia Program.
- Eduard Verhagen
Eduard Verhagen is clinical director of pediatrics at the University of Groningen. He is mainly known for his involvement in infant euthanasia in the Netherlands. Euthanasia, while legal for adults, is illegal for children under the age of 12 in the Netherlands. Verhagen, who studied law and medicine, worked out a protocol with prosecutors and doctors in 2002 for infant euthanasia cases.
- Ramón Sampedro
Ramón Sampedro was a ship mechanic from Galicia, Spain who was paralyzed in a diving accident at the age of 25 and fought for his right to an assisted suicide for the next 29 years. His argument hinged on the fact that he was sure of his decision to die. However, due to his paralysis, he was physically unable to commit suicide. He argued that suicide was a right and that he was being denied that right. He sought legal advice concerning his right to an assisted suicide, …
- Laura Schlessinger
Laura Catherine Schlessinger (born January 16, 1947) is an American cultural and conservative commentator, most known as host of the popular "Dr. Laura" radio advice call-in show. The show is nationally syndicated and runs three hours a day on weekdays. Schlessinger is an outspoken critic of practices that she feels have become too prevalent in contemporary American culture.
- Peter Brown
Peter Brown (born 1939) is a member of the New Zealand Parliament, and deputy leader of the New Zealand First party. He formerly managed a stevedoring company and led the New Zealand Stevedoring Employers Association; he holds a sea captain's certificate. Brown was nearly elected to parliament as a New Zealand First candidate for the Kaimai electorate in the 1993 election, entered parliament as a list MP with the 1996 election.
- Viktor Brack
Viktor Brack (November 9, 1904-June 2, 1948) was the organiser of the Euthanasia Programme, Operation T4, where the Nazi state systematically murdered German disabled people. Following this, Brack was one of the men responsible for the gassing of Jews in the extermination camps, and he conferred with Odilo Globocnik about the practical implementation of the Final Solution. Brack was sentenced to death in 1947 and executed in 1948.
- Marshall Perron
Marshall Perron (b. 5 February, 1942) is a former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory of Australia. He is best known for successfully working towards the passage of the Territory's Rights of the Terminally Ill Act that briefly legalized euthanasia (before it was overturned by the federal Parliament).
- Yale Kamisar
Yale Kamisar is the Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor of Law Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Michigan Law School as well as a tenured professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Professor Kamisar, a graduate of Columbia Law School, joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 1965, and has taught at San Diego since 2002. Legal scholar in the field of criminal law and criminal procedure.
- Elizabeth Bouvia
Elizabeth Bouvia is a figure in the right-to-die movement. Her case attracted nationwide attention in this area as well as in medical ethics.
- Sandra Kanck
Sandra Kanck is an Australian politician and an Australian Democrats member in the South Australian Legislative Council since 1993, and was re-elected for a second eight-year term in the 2002 election. Kanck considers herself to be an occasional singer, former teacher, social justice campaigner, and environmentalist. Kanck recently caused some controversy for her comments on MDMA in therapeutic cases, …
- Gerard Henderson
Gerard Henderson is an Australian newspaper columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald. He is also Executive Director of the Sydney Institute, a privately funded current affairs forum and "conservative think-tank". His wife Anne Henderson is Deputy Director. Henderson attended the Jesuit Xavier College in Melbourne. He studied Arts and Law at the University of Melbourne, …
- Glanville Williams
Glanville Llewelyn Williams QC, LL.D., F.B.A. (born 15 February 1911, died 10 April 1997) was an influential Welsh legal professor and formerly the Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge. Throughout his lifetime he also served as an Honorary and Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, …
- Chris Ellison
Christopher Martin Ellison (born 15 June 1954), an Australian politician, has been a Liberal member of the Australian Senate since July 1993, representing Western Australia. He was born in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and was educated at the University of Western Australia, where he gained a law degree. He was a barrister and solicitor and a lawyer with the Legal Aid Commission of Western Australia before entering politics.
- David Clarke
David John Clarke, Australian politician, is a Liberal member of the New South Wales Legislative Council since 2003.
- Maria Korp
Maria Korp (b 1955?, d. August 5, 2005), 50, was an Australian woman reported missing for four days and later found, barely alive, in the boot of her car in Dallas Brooks Drive, Melbourne on February 13, 2005. In the time after her attack she spent many months in a coma and became the centre of a euthanasia controversy in Australia during 2005 surrounding the removal of a feeding tube. Maria Korp died on August 5, 2005. Her husband, Joe Korp, charged with her murder, …
- Clemens August Graf von Galen
Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. An outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, he issued forceful, public denunciations of the Third Reich's euthanasia programs and persecution of the Catholic Church, making him one of the most visible and unrelenting internal voices of dissent against the Nazis.
- Paul Nitsche
Hermann Paul Nitsche (born November 25, 1876 in Colditz, died March 25, 1948 in Dresden) was a German psychiatrist known for his expert endorsement of the Third Reich's euthanasia authorization and who later headed the T-4 Euthanasia Program. He was deputy director of the Sonnenstein Clinic from 1913 to 1918 and director of the institution 1928 to 1939. In 1940 he became deputy director of the department T4 under Werner Heyde, …
- Michael Palmer
Michael Stephen Palmer, M.D. (born October 9, 1942, Springfield, Massachusetts, United States), is the author of 12 novels, often called the "Medical thrillers series". He trained in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals, spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and is now an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society's physician health program.
- Bernhard Lichtenberg
Bernhard Lichtenberg (December 3, 1875 - November 5, 1943) was a German Catholic priest and theologian. He was born on the 3rd of December, 1875, in Ohlau, Prussia (today Poland), near Breslau, and studied theology in Innsbruck, Austria. He was then ordained priest in 1899. He began his ministry in Berlin in 1900 as parson in Charlottenburg. For a time he also was a member of the local parliament for the Centre Party.
- Kurt Blome
Kurt Blome was a high-ranking Nazi scientist before and during the Second World War. He was a deputy of the Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. Blome captured the spirit of his medical identity in an autobiographical book, "Arzt im Kampf" (Physician in Struggle), in which he exuberantly equated medical and military power in their battle for life and death.
- Edward Brongersma
Edward Brongersma (born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, on August 31, 1911 and died in Bloemendaal/Overveen, the Netherlands on April 22, 1998) was a Dutch politician and doctor of law. He was for a number of years a member of the Dutch Eerste Kamer ("First Chamber" or Senate) for the Labour Party, and chairman of the Eerste Kamer's Judiciary Committee (1969-1977).
- Helga Wanglie
Helga Wanglie was an elderly woman in a persistent vegetative state who became the object of a 1991 lawsuit over whether to continue life-sustaining care. Mrs. Wanglie suffered a fall on December 14, 1989 and subsequently developed respriatory problems and pneumonia. She became dependent on a medical ventilator. In May 1990 she suffered severe brain damage while hospitalized at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
- Werner Catel
Werner Catel (1894-1981), Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Leipzig, was one of three doctors considered an expert on the programme of euthanasia for children and participated in the T-4 Program for the Nazis, the other two being Hans Heinze and Ernst Wentzler. He was also tied to Hellmuth Unger.
- Alex Epstein
I am a professional intellectual, writer, and speaker specializing in cultural, political, and business issues. My favorite part of my job is taking some complex problem and identifying the basic principles necessary to solve it. My
- John Lorber
John Lorber (1915-1996) was a professor of paediatrics at the University of Sheffield from 1979 until his retirement in 1981. He worked before at the Children's Hospital of Sheffield where he becames renowned for his work on spina bifida. He is also known for his writings on medical ethics, against use of intensive medication for severely handicapped infants, and against active euthanasia. In 1980, Roger Lewin wrote a story published in Science, …
- Daniel Sinclair
Daniel Sinclair is a scholar of Jewish law (Halakhah) who specializes in contemporary Jewish medical ethics. His books include "Tradition and the biological revolution" (1989) and "Jewish biomedical law: Legal and extra-legal dimensions" (2003). Sinclair also has authored a number of articles on Jewish ethics and written about Israeli applications of Jewish law (Mishpat Ivri). Among other topics, he has written on Jewish approaches to abortion, …
- Eliezer Waldenberg
Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg (December 10 1915 -November 21 2006) was known as the Tzitz Eliezer after his monumental halachic treatise "Tzitz Eliezer" that covers a wide breadth of halacha, including medical halacha, as well as more common halachic issues from Shabbat to kashrut. He was born in Jerusalem in 1915 and died there on November 21, 2006.
- C. C. Little
Clarence Cook "C.C." Little was an American genetics, cancer, and tobacco researcher. He was born in Brookline, Massachusetts and attended Harvard University. While studying under W. E. Castle, Little began his work with mice, focused on inheritance, transplants, and grafts. He also was an assistant dean and secretary to the president. His most important research occurred at Harvard, including what some call his most brilliant work, …