the most recent cases and legal developments in Germany, Britain, USA, Australia, and the Netherlands helps to fill this gap. Taking the approach of a critical commentator on historical sources, the author presents a wide range of positions in the Jewish and Christian traditions, the medical profession, law, and philosophy (including the contributions by Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Singer). I...

tions about a sensitive topic on the telephone can be difficult, a questionnaire with a fixed choice of answers prevented doctors from qualifying or justifying their responses, and we lacked detailed information about doctors who did not respond. Previous studies found similar patterns, but the French counterparts to Italian general practitioners and US oncologists were more in favour of legali...

This is a study of American public opinion toward euthanasia and the physician's role in performing it. The authors examine how these attributes are affected by religious affiliation, religious self-perception, political self-perception and education. The data include 8384 American respondents from years 1977, 1978, 1982, 1985 and 1988 of the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opin...

Euthanasia is not a new concept. However, there is a growing trend to legalize voluntary active euthanasia. The purpose of this study was to explore oncology nurses' attitudes toward voluntary active euthanasia. The population consisted of 200 registered nurses who were members of the Oncology Nurses' Society and who resided in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri. I developed a questionnaire ...

Despite tremendous advances in medical care for critically ill newborn infants, caregivers in neonatal intensive care units still struggle with how to approach those patients whose prognoses appear to be the most grim, and whose treatments appear to be the most futile. Although the practice of passive neonatal euthanasia, from a moral perspective, has been widely (albeit quietly) condoned, thos...

In 2002, Belgium was the second country in the world, after the Netherlands, to legalize physician-assisted death and euthanasia in very restricted conditions [1]. Euthanasia has to be required by a conscious patient suffering from an irreversible affliction inducing physical and/or psychological suffering, with no hope for improvement or for rapid spontaneous death; request for euthanasia has ...