"Of course, the movement for legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia is at least in part the result of a culture increasingly influenced by strict neutralist concepts of autonomy, itself perhaps the byproduct of the baby boomer generation heading into old age... But when it comes not to defending an abstract "right to die" but to making the very concrete and personal decision whether to die, it seems that something more basic may be in play. We have known since Jefferson's time that old-fashioned suicide is often motivated by mental ailments, depression foremost among these. Yet contemporary assisted suicide and euthanasia advocates have long denied that depression plays any meaningful role in assisted suicide and euthanasia requests. The findings in the Journal of Clinical Oncology now point to a contrary conclusion, suggesting that the desire to seek out any early death at the hands of a doctor is itself not so much the result of a dispassionate and cool response to a poor prognosis as it is the product of diagnosable and treatable depression."