ARGUING EUTHANASIA: The Controversy over Mercy Killing, Assisted Suicide, and the "Right to Die." Edited by JonathanD. Moreno. Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. 251 pp. $11

In November 1994, the voters of Oregon overturned two millennia of medical tradition by allowing terminally ill patients to ask their physicians for "medication" to end life. If Ballot Measure 16 withstands all court challenges, Oregon will go beyond the precedent set by the Netherlands, where doctors may assist death with impunity (under guidelines) but without explicit legal sanction.

Among the 18 pointed essays collected here, readers will find fair and intelligent representation of both sides in the debate over assisted suicide and other forms of euthanasia. A few contributors, such as legal theorist Ronald Dworkin, try to straddle the issue. (After asserting the sacredness of human life, he defends "choice" in interpreting what that means.)

But the thrust of this volume, whose contributors include physicians, medical ethicists, philosophers, and columnists, will not bring great comfort to supporters of the Hemlock Society. As Dr. Richard Selzer shows in a disturbing personal essay, the patient who begs for a lethal injection one day may ask for his life to be prolonged on the next.

--Jay Tolson