In an attempt to take an informal poll on the question of easy death, the Sunday Forum of the Akron, Ohio Beacon Journal last month published a melancholy letter signed "Lonely Man." The letter was headed: Would You Kill Yourself If You Had An Incurable Illness?

". . . All I want," wrote Lonely Man, "is advice. ... I am 58 years old . . . out of work . . . have an illness that I believe to be incurable. . . . Those of you who have knife-edge pains shooting through you continually, who are unable to eat regularly, who...