Little Known Facts in the Euthanasia Debate:
- An autopsy of Terri Schiavo performed on April 1, 2005 revealed that her brain weighed 615 grams -- less than half of the expected weight for an adult her age.
- Jack Kevorkian, M.D., the pathologist imprisoned for his role in the euthanasia of Thomas Youk, told reporters that he would not choose assisted suicide for himself.
- Visits to the Internet site for the U.S. Living Will Registry increased from 500 a day to 50,000 a day when the Schiavo case was in the headlines.
- The original text of the ancient Greek Hippocratic Oath, that is still taken (in some form) by many medical school graduates, contained prohibitions against surgery, abortion, and euthanasia.
- A 2003 study appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine found that 11 percent of physicians surveyed [1,902 total] would, under certain circumstances, be willing to hasten a patient's death by prescribing medication, and that 7 percent would administer a lethal injection, despite both acts being illegal at the time of the survey.
- A May 2006 Gallup Poll found that 69% of Americans answered yes to the question "When a person has a disease that cannot be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end the patient's life by some painless means if the patient and his family request it?"
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