Euthanasia can be classified into four categories: active, passive, voluntary, and involuntary. At first, active euthanasia is the act of hastening death with drugs or forcing the death of the patient. That means this involves causing the death of a person through a direct action, in response to a request from that person. A well known example was the mercy killing in 1998 of a patient with Lou Gehrig's Disease by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan physician. His patient was frightened that the advancing disease would cause him to die a horrible death in the near future; he wanted a quick, painless exit from life. Dr. Kevorkian injected controlled substances into the patient, thus causing his death. Charged with 1st degree murder, the jury found
