Not Dead Yet is a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 disability rights group that opposes assisted suicide

Assisted suicide

Assisted suicide is the common term for actions by which an individual helps another person voluntarily bring about his or her own death. "Assistance" may mean providing one with the means to end one's own life, but may extend to other actions. It differs to euthanasia where another person ends...

 and euthanasia

Euthanasia

Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....

. Diane Coleman, JD, is the founder and president of this national group. Stephen Drake, a research analyst with NDY, is one of the group's chief spokespersons and contacts for press releases.

The group was founded on April 27, 1996. It got its name from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1974 British comedy film written and performed by the comedy group Monty Python , and directed by Gilliam and Jones...

, in which plague

Bubonic plague

Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

 victims were thrown into a cart and hauled off to be buried. A man being given up as a corpse by his family protests that he is "not dead yet!"

In 2004 NDY was in the news for having protested the removal of Terri Schiavo

Terri Schiavo

The Terri Schiavo case was a legal battle in the United States between the legal guardians and the parents of Teresa Marie "Terri" Schiavo that lasted from 1998 to 2005...

's feeding tube, and for protesting the movie Million Dollar Baby

Million Dollar Baby

Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman...

, in which a man's removal of a ventilator from a suicidal quadriplegic woman is depicted as a rational and compassionate act. The group has been highly critical of utilitarian philosophers such as Peter Singer

Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...

 of Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. Coleman has called Professor Singer "the most dangerous man on earth" and accused him of advocating genocide.

NDY is neither a partisan nor a sectarian group, but rather includes participants from a wide range of political and religious leanings. The group takes a disability rights stance, demanding equal access to the suicide prevention measures taken for non-disabled people. Noting that people already have the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, the group opposes public policy that singles out individuals for legalized killing based on their health status.