Euthanasia in Europe

Euthanasia has been discussed in Europe over the last decades and has now received new attention, since the legalization in the Netherlands of the actual practice in that country in April 2001. The wish for an easy, painless death is certainly immanent in all of us. However, the means to an easy death with dignity and free from suffering can differ dramatically. Euthanasia seems to many people to be the only way, whereas the most important alternative - palliative medicine - is still relatively unknown and underdeveloped in many European countries. Much of this situation is based on non-existent or disappointingly little attention paid to end-of-life care in medical curricula, postgraduate training programmes, and medical textbooks. Only in the United Kingdom is palliative medicine an established speciality. Palliative care as the total care of patients and their families by a multiprofessional team, when the patient's disease is no longer responsive to curative treatment as defined by WHO, is rarely provided for in the other highly developed European countries. Medical ethics, communication, and pain treatment are urgently needed topics in our professional curricula and at all medical schools. The purely curative approach to medicine has to be changed into a palliative one, as more and more patients are going to be older and suffer from chronic illnesses. We have to understand that pain and mental suffering are the same medical emergencies as cardiac arrest. This book offers a survey of current national legislation, professional guidelines, and a depiction of the practical reality from an ethical viewpoint. Contributions are made from all countries of the European Union, and from two non-member states, Norway and Switzerland. The editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the programme Europe Against Cancer.