The number of elderly and terminally ill patients throughout the world seeking a more dignified and less painless way out from their current situation is not a recent phenomenon.  For decades, this has been a hot topic, strongly debated from both sides.  As the ability to care for patients way beyond their body’s natural ability to survive, the topic of voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have only become more relevant and discussed.    In certain countries, voluntary euthanasia is legal, such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands and in the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon.  However, for most parts of the world, it is still considered illegal and patients and families of those patients are often faced with difficult and troubling prospects when the will or desire to live has long vanished.  Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a one time practicing pathologist out of Michigan is probably one of the most recognized figures within the debate of physician-assisted suicide.  During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, Kevorkian is said to have assisted over 100 patients in ending their lives.   He is famously quoted for saying, “dying is not a crime.”  There also exists a distinction between voluntary euthanasia and active euthanasia, where active euthanasia is seen as more difficult to justify or evaluate in the public’s eye.  The distinction is drawn where in voluntary euthanasia, the patient takes the steps towards ending his or her life, as in taking a pill or self-administering the drug intravenously.   Active euthanasia is when the doctor administers the required protocols for ending the patient’s life, whereas the patient is physically unable to do so.    There is also the consideration of insurability among those whose death is due to voluntary euthanasia.  Most, if not all, life insurance policies do not cover death as a result of suicide.  Therefore, in the case of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act: “… participation under the Act is not suicide, so should not affect insurance benefits by that definition.”