by Thomas A. Bowden

About the author: Thomas A. Bowden is an attorney in private practice in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a member of the board of directors of the Association for Objective Law and a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.

On August 20, 1961, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist shot himself dead, leaving behind a suicide note whose poignant message reminds us of a truth that our society, thirty-five years later, still has not squarely faced.

Dr. Percy Bridgman, who was 79 years old, had been suffering through the final stages of terminal cancer. Wracked with pain and bereft of hope, he sought a way to end his life with dignity. But then, as now, it was illegal for a doctor to administer drugs intended to hasten death.

So Dr. Bridgman got a gun, and...