International Timeline: 1906 - 2009

1906 First euthanasia bill drafted in Ohio. It does not succeed.
1935 World's first euthanasia society is founded in London, England.
1938 The Euthanasia Society of America is founded by the Rev. Charles Potter in New York.
1954 Joseph Fletcher publishes Morals and Medicine, predicting the coming controversy over the right to die.
1957 Pope Pius XII issues Catholic doctrine distinguishing ordinary from extraordinary means for sustaining life.
1958 Oxford law professor Glanville Williams publishes The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law, proposing that voluntary euthanasia be allowed for competent, terminally ill patients.
1958 Lael Wertenbaker publishes Death of a Man describing how she helped her husband commit suicide. It is the first book in this genre.
1967 The first living will is written by attorney Louis Kutner and his arguments for it appear in the Indiana Law Journal.
1967 A right-to-die bill is introduced by Dr. Walter W. Sackett in Florida's legislature. It arouses extensive debate but is unsuccessful.
1968 Doctors at Harvard Medical School propose redefining death to include brain death as well as heart-lung death. Gradually this definition is accepted.
1969 Voluntary euthanasia bill introduced in the Idaho legislation. It fails.
1969 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross publishes On Death and Dying, opening discussion of the once-taboo subject of death.
1970 The Euthanasia Society (US) finishes distributing 60,000 living wills.
1973 American Hospital Association creates Patient Bill of Rights, which includes informed consent and the right to refuse treatment.
1973 Dr. Gertruida Postma, who gave her dying mother a lethal injection, receives light sentence in the Netherlands. The furore launches the euthanasia movement in that country (NVVE).
1974 The Euthanasia Society in New York renamed the Society for the Right to Die. The first hospice American hospice opens in New Haven, Conn.
1975 Deeply religious Van Dusens commit suicide. Henry P. Van Dusen, 77, and his wife, Elizabeth, 80, leaders of the Christian ecumenical movement, choose to die rather than suffer from disabling conditions. Their note reads, "We still feel this is the best way and the right way to go."
1975 Dutch Voluntary Euthanasia Society (NVVE) launches it's Members' Aid Service to give advice to the dying. Receives 25 requests for aid in the first year.
1976 The New Jersey Supreme Court allows Karen Ann Quinlan's parents to disconnect the respirator that keeps her alive, saying it is affirming the choice Karen herself would have made. Quinlan case becomes a legal landmark. But she lives on for another eight years.
1976 California Natural Death Act is passed. The nation's first aid in dying statute gives legal standing to living wills and protects physicians from being sued for failing to treat incurable illnesses.
1976 Ten more U.S. states pass natural death laws.
1976 First international meeting of right-to-die groups. Six are represented in Tokyo.
1977 A people's initiative asking the Swiss Federal Parliament to install euthanasia for incurable ill people in the Swiss canton of Zurich is passed by 203,148 votes to 144,822. But the Federal Parliament does not follow the initiative.
1978 Doris Portwood publishes landmark book Commonsense Suicide: The Final Right. It argues that old people in poor health might justifiably kill themselves.
1978 Whose Life Is It Anyway? A play about a young artist who becomes quadriplegic, is staged in London and on Broadway, raising disturbing questions about the right to die. A film version appears in 1982. Simultaneously, Jean's Way is published in England by Derek Humphry, describing how he helped his terminally ill wife to die.
1979 Artist Jo Roman, dying of cancer, commits suicide at a much-publicized gathering of friends that is later broadcast on public television and reported by the New York Times.
1979 Two right-to-die organizations split. The Society for the Right to Die separates from Concern for Dying, a companion group that grew out of the Society's Euthanasia Education Council.
1980 Advice column Dear Abby publishes a letter from a reader agonizing over a dying loved one, generating 30,000 advance care directive requests at the Society for the Right to Die.
1980 Pope John Paul II issues Declaration in Euthanasia opposing mercy killing but permits the greater use of painkillers to ease pain and the right to refuse extraordinary means for sustaining life.
1980 Hemlock Society is founded in Santa Monica, California, by Derek Humphry. It advocates legal change and distributes how to die information. This launches the campaign for assisted dying in America. Hemlock's national membership will grow to 50,000 within a decade. Right to die societies are also formed the same year in France, Germany and Canada.
1980 World Federation of Right to Die Societies is formed in Oxford, England. It comprises 27 groups from 18 nations.
1981 Hemlock publishes how-to suicide guide, Let Me Die Before I Wake, the first such book on open sale.
1982 EXIT ADMD Suisse Romande (French-speaking part of Switzerland) is founded, followed in April by EXIT (Deutsche Schweiz) German-speaking part of Switzerland as well as Italian speaking part). Both give at first only information to their members and after at least three months of membership also printed advice how to end one's own life. Later they began to offer assistance to suicide; first with a combination of medicaments, later with pentobarbital sodium prescribed by a physician. Assistance to suicide in Switzerland is possible for everybody since there is no law regulating it. The basis is Article 115 of the Swiss Crimimal Code saying that abetting and helping to suicide for selfish motives is punished with up to five years of imprisonment; if somebody acts without selfish mobile, there is no crime.
1983 Famous author (Darkness at Noon etc) Arthur Koestler, terminally ill, commits suicide a year after publishing his reasons. His wife Cynthia, not dying, chooses to commit suicide with him.
1983 Elizabeth Bouvia, a quadriplegic suffering from cerebral palsy, sues a California hospital to let her die of self-starvation while receiving comfort care. She loses, and files an appeal.
1984 Advance care directives become recognized in 22 states and the District of Columbia.
1984 The Netherlands Supreme Court approves voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide under strict conditions.
1985 Karen Ann Quinlan dies.
1985 Betty Rollin publishes Last Wish, her account of helping her mother to die after a long losing battle with breast cancer. The book becomes a bestseller.
1986 Roswell Gilbert, 76, sentenced in Florida to 25 years without parole for shooting his terminally ill wife. Granted clemency five years later.
1986 Elizabeth Bouvia is granted the right to refuse force feeding by an appeals court. But she declines to take advantage of the permission and is still alive in 1998.
1987 The California State Bar Conference passes Resolution #3-4-87 to become the first public body to approve of physician aid in dying.
1988 Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations passes a national resolution favouring aid in dying for the terminally ill, becoming the first religious body to affirm a right to die.
1990 American Medical Association adopts the formal position that with informed consent, a physician can withhold or withdraw treatment from a patient who is close to death, and may also discontinue life support of a patient in a permanent coma.
1990 Dr. Jack Kevorkian assists in the death of Janet Adkins, a middle-aged woman with Alzheimer's disease. Kevorkian subsequently flaunts the Michigan legislature's attempts to stop him from assisting in additional suicides.
1990 Supreme Court decides the Cruzan case, its first aid in dying ruling. The decision recognizes that competent adults have a constitutionally protected liberty interest that includes a right to refuse medical treatment; the court also allows a state to impose procedural safeguards to protect its interests.
1990 Hemlock of Oregon introduces the Death With Dignity Act into the Oregon legislature via senator Frank Roberts. But it fails to get out of committee.
1990 Congress passes the Patient Self-Determination Act, requiring hospitals that receive federal funds to tell patients that they have a right to demand or refuse treatment. It takes effect the next year.
1991 Dr. Timothy Quill writes about "Diane" in the New England Journal of Medicine, describing his provision of lethal drugs to a leukaemia patient who chose to die at home by her own hand rather than undergo therapy that offered a 25 percent chance of survival.
1991 Nationwide Gallup poll finds that 75 percent of Americans approve of living wills.
1991 Derek Humphry publishes Final Exit, a how-to book on self-deliverance. The book immediately sells 540,000 hardcover copies and tops USA bestseller lists. It is translated into twelve other languages. Nearly two decades later it is still a big seller in paperback and digital download. Total sales exceed one million.
1991 Choice in Dying is formed by the merger of two 'aid in dying' organizations, Concern for Dying and Society for the Right to Die. The new organization becomes known for defending patients' rights and promoting living wills, and will grow in five years to 150,000 members.
1991 Washington State voters reject Ballot Initiative 119, which would have legalized physician-aided suicide and aid in dying. The vote is 54-46 percent.
1992 Final Exit (in translation Exit Final) is banned in France under a 1986 law, but sells freely in the rest of the world.
1992 California voters defeat Proposition 161, which would have allowed physicians to hasten death by actively administering or prescribing medications for self administration by suffering, terminally ill patients. The vote is 54-46 percent.
1993 Derek Humphry starts ERGO (Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization) a non profit group to research and publish literature on the right to die.
1993 Compassion in Dying is founded in Washington state to counsel the terminally ill and provide information about how to die without suffering and "with personal assistance, if necessary, to intentionally hasten death." The group sponsors suits challenging state laws against assisted suicide.
1993 President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly support advance directives and sign living wills, acting after the death of Hugh Rodham, Hillary's father.
1993 Despairing of legislation progress, Oregon Right to Die, a political action committee, is founded to write and subsequently to pass the Oregon Death with Dignity Act by citizen's ballot initiative
1994 More presidential living wills are revealed. After the deaths of former President Richard Nixon and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, it is reported that both had signed advance directives.
1994 All states and the District of Columbia now recognize some type of advance directive procedure.
1994 Washington State's anti-suicide law is overturned. In Compassion v. Washington, a district court finds that a law outlawing assisted suicide violates the 14th Amendment. Judge Rothstein writes, "The court does not believe that a distinction can be drawn between refusing life-sustaining medical treatment and physician-assisted suicide by an un-coerced, mentally competent, terminally ill adult."
1994 In New York State, the lawsuit Quill et al v. Koppell is filed to challenge the New York law prohibiting assisted suicide. Quill loses, and files an appeal.
1994 Oregon voters approve Measure 16, a Death with Dignity Act ballot initiative that would permit terminally ill patients, under proper safeguards, to obtain a physician's prescription to end life in a humane and dignified manner. The vote is 51-49 percent. But U.S. District Court Judge Michael Hogan issues a temporary restraining order against Oregon's Measure 16, following that with an injunction immediately barring the state from putting the law into effect.
1995 Marshall Perron, Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in Australia introduces his Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI) into the NT Legislative Assembly.
1995 Washington State's Compassion ruling is overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, reinstating the anti suicide law.
1995 U.S. District Judge Hogan rules that Oregon Measure 16, the Death with Dignity Act, is unconstitutional on grounds it violates the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. His ruling is immediately appealed.
1995 Surveys find that doctors disregard most advance directives. Journal of the American Medical Association reports that physicians were unaware of the directives of three-quarters of all elderly patients admitted to a New York hospital; the California Medical Review reports that three-quarters of all advance directives were missing from Medicare records in that state.
1995 Oral arguments in the appeal of Quill v. Vacco contest the legality of New York's anti-suicide law before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
1995 Compassion case is reconsidered in Washington State by a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel of eleven judges, the largest panel ever to hear a physician-assisted suicide case.
1996 The Northern Territory of Australia passes voluntary euthanasia law. Nine months later the Federal Parliament quashes it. Only four hastened deaths took place under this law, all performed by one doctor, Philip Nitschke.
1996 The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the Compassion finding in Washington state, holding that "a liberty interest exists in the choice of how and when one dies, and that the provision of the Washington statute banning assisted suicide, as applied to competent, terminally ill adults who wish to hasten their deaths by obtaining medication prescribed by their doctors, violates the Due Process Clause." The ruling affects laws of nine western states. It is stayed pending appeal to the US Supreme Court.
1996 A Michigan jury acquits Dr. Kevorkian of violating a state law banning
1996 The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reverses the Quill finding, ruling that "The New York statutes criminalizing assisted suicide violate the Equal Protection Clause because, to the extent that they prohibit a physician from prescribing medications to be self-administered by a mentally competent, terminally ill person in the final stages of his terminal illness, they are not rationally related to any legitimate state interest." The ruling affects laws in New York, Vermont and Connecticut. (On 17 April the court stays enforcement of its ruling for 30 days pending an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.)
1996 The U.S. Supreme Court announces that it will review both cases sponsored by Compassion in Dying, known now as Washington v. Glucksberg and Quill v. Vacco.
1997 ACLU attorney Robert Rivas files an amended complaint challenging the 128 year-old Florida law banning assisted suicide. Charles E. Hall, who has AIDS, asks court permission for a doctor to assist his suicide. The court refuses.
1997 On 13 May the Oregon House of Representatives votes 32-26 to return Measure 16 to the voters in November for repeal (H.B. 2954). On 10 June the Senate votes 20-10 to pass H.B. 2954 and return Measure 16 to the voters for repeal. No similar attempt to overturn the will of the voters has been tried in Oregon since 1908.
1997 On 26 June the U.S. Supreme Court reverses the decisions of the Ninth and Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington v. Glucksberg and Quill v. Vacco, upholding as constitutional state statutes which bar assisted suicide. However, the court also validated the concept of "double effect," openly acknowledging that death hastened by increased palliative measures does not constitute prohibited conduct so long as the intent is the relief of pain and suffering. The majority opinion ended with the pronouncement that "Throughout the nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society."
1997 Dutch Voluntary Euthanasia Society (NVVE) reports its membership now more than 90,000, of whom 900 made requests for help in dying to its Members' Aid Service.
1997 Britain's Parliament rejects by 234 votes to 89 the seventh attempt in 60 years to change the law on assisted suicide, despite polls showing 82 percent of British people want reform.
1997 On 4 November the people of Oregon vote by a margin of 60-40 percent against Measure 51, which would have repealed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, 1994. The law officially takes effect (ORS 127.800-897) on 27 October 1997 when court challenges disposed of. Actual implementation of the law starts on the first day of 1998.
1998 Dr. Kevorkian assists the suicide of his 92nd patient in eight years. His home state, Michigan, passes new law making such actions a crime. It took effect September, 1 1998, but Kevorkian carries on helping people to die - 120 by November.
1998 Oregon Health Services Commission decides that payment for physician-assisted suicide can come from state funds under the Oregon Health Plan so that the poor will not be discriminated against.
1998 16 people die by making use of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, receiving physician-assisted suicide in its first full year of implementation. 1998 Measure B on the Michigan ballot to legalize physician-assisted suicide defeated by 70-30 percent.
1998 The Swiss association Dignitas (To live with Dignity, To die with Dignity) is founded; it offers assisted suicide and is the first Swiss organization also accepting members from abroad.
1999 Dr. Kevorkian sentenced to 10-25 years imprisonment for the 2nd degree murder of Thomas Youk after showing video of death by injection on national television. His appeals are dismissed.
2000 Citizens' Ballot Initiative in Maine to approve the lawfulness of Physician- Assisted Suicide narrowly defeated 51-49 percent.
2001 MS victim Diane Pretty asks UK court to allow her husband to help her commit suicide. The London High Court, the House of Lords, and the Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, all say no. She dies in hospice a few weeks later.
2002 Dutch law allowing voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide takes effect on 1 February. For 20 years previously it had been permitted under guidelines.
2002 Belgium passes similar law to the Dutch, allowing both voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.
2003 US Attorney-General Ashcroft asks the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal to reverse the finding of a lower court judge that the Oregon Death With Dignity Act 1994 does not contravene federal powers. 129 dying people have used this law over the last five years to obtain legal physician-assisted suicide. The losers of this appeal ask the US Supreme Court to rule, which it agrees to do.
2003 UK parliament rejects the Patient (Assisted Dying) Bill introduced by Lord Joffe. Identical to the Oregon law, it was fiercely opposed by the churches. This was the eighth time in 60 years that a right to die was refused by the London parliament.
2004 Famed psychiatrist Elizabeth Kuber-Ross (best known for book On Death and Dying) dies at age 78 in Arizona.
2004 Hemlock Society USA is renamed End-of-Life Choices and within months is merged with Compassion in Dying to become Compassion & Choices (C&C). This causes the Final Exit Network to be formed from the ashes of Hemlock to develop a system of volunteer guides across America to help dying people who request assistance.
2004 Lesley Martin in New Zealand completes a seven-month prison sentence for the attempted murder by morphine overdose of her terminally ill mother. Vows to continue to work for lawful voluntary euthanasia.
2005 Terri Shiavo in Florida is allowed to die after 14 years in a persistent vegetative state. President Bush, Republicans and right to life group fought to keep her on life supports but courts maintained she had the right to be allowed to die.
2006 US Supreme Court refuses the Attorney-General's application to repeal the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. Bush administration wanted America's only physician-assisted suicide law struck down on the grounds that states do not control lethal drugs. But Oregon State successfully argued that states control medical practice and that the drugs required for this form of death were never meant to be banned.
2006 Dr. Philip Nitschke publishes The Peaceful Pill Handbook outlining ways to bring one's own life to an end. It is immediately banned in his own country, Australia, also in New Zealand, but sells throughout the rest of the world.
2007 Dr. Jack Kevorkian released from prison on parole. He had served nine years. He helped some 130 people to die, all within his home area.
2008 Oregon: Ten Years Later. Oregon's Death With Dignity law celebrates a decade of flawless implementation and a legacy of better pain management and hospice care Ten years ago the final legal hurdle to implementation of Oregon's Death With Dignity Act was removed, paving the way for a decade of flawless implementation of the USA's only Death With Dignity Law. Since 1997, 341 Oregonians have used aid in dying. That's about one in 1,000 deaths. Many more terminally ill people think and talk about aid in dying; one in six discusses it with loved ones. About one in 50 begins the eligibility process by speaking to his or her doctor. Read the full details here.
2008 On April 22, 2008, the Mexican Senate voted 70-0 in favour of legalizing passive euthanasia. This concept allows doctors to withdraw life-sustaining medication from patients, but not to, for instance, administer poisons. (Assisted suicide or active euthanasia occurs when an individual who is not physically capable of ending his or her own life requests the help of a physician to do so.) The Mexican bill calls for legalizing passive euthanasia when the patient is in palliative care and has been given less than six months to live. Doctors have to act with consent from the patient or the patient's family. The regulation stipulates that the patient will have the option of "voluntarily requesting the suspension of healing treatment and selecting integral care to control pain."
2009 The Washington ballot 1-1000 that passed on 4th November 2008, the day of the USA Presidential election with a vote of 58 per cent to 42 per cent - a landslide in USA ballot terms - becomes effective in July 2009. The Initiative gives Washington residents very similar rights to those in neighbouring Oregon, where terminally-ill patients may request and receive medication to die peacefully on their own terms, with a strong set of safe guards.
2009 Assisted-suicide bills that are virtually identical to Oregon's law have been introduced in Hawaii, New Hampshire and Montana (USA).
2009 Luxembourg parliament adopted a law in February to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, adding the Grand Duchy to a small group of countries that allow the terminally ill to end their lives.
2009 Dignitas under investigation. The Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas that has helped approximately 1,000 people to end their lives is under investigation. Dignitas is being forced to open its accounts to prosecutors in Switzerland and disclose how much money it is receiving from its controversial business of assisting suicide.
2009 Four members of Final Exit Network are arrested and charged with assisted suicide, tampering with evidence and a violation of Georgia's (USA) anti-racketeering act. (This last charge was so assets could be seized, in an attempt to deny ability to pay for a criminal defence) after allegedly helping a 58-year-old man end his life. Authorities in at least eight other states are executing search warrants related to the investigation.

as at 9 Apr 09