The Voluntary Euthanasia Society said the survey results showed the government should change the law.

BBC: Doctors 'back euthanasia'

He wanted independence for Scotland, he was president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and, at 80, he brought out a book dismissing the beliefs on which Christianity was founded as "preposterous".

BBC: Obituary: Sir Ludovic Kennedy

"He persuaded us of the wider picture, that we needed doctors, " said Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society, which advocated voluntary euthanasia.

WSJ: Assisted-Suicide Advocate Peter Goodwin Takes Own Life

If voluntary euthanasia at the end of life becomes more widely accepted, it is likely that society's disapproval of suicide in general will come under greater scrutiny, if only because the dividing line between suicide in the case of the terminally ill and other kinds of suicide will become more blurred.

ECONOMIST: Let death be my dominion