OBJECTIVE To present the views of a representative sample of neonatal doctors and nurses in 10 European countries on the moral acceptability of active euthanasia and its legal regulation. DESIGN A total of 142 neonatal intensive care units were recruited by census (in the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, and the Baltic countries) or random sampling (in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Unit...

When is it lawful and ethical to withhold or withdraw treatment and tube feeding? In recent years, the courts have handed down important decisions and medical bodies have issued professional guidelines on withholding and withdrawing treatment and tube feeding. A major criticism of these decisions and guidelines has been that while they prohibit the intentional hastening of a patient's life by a...

The November 8, 1994 passage of Oregon's Measure 16, which permits physicians to comply with the request of a competent adult patient with less than six months to live for a prescription for lethal drugs, has intensified the debate over the legalization of physicianassisted suicide following the defeats of similar initiatives in Washington' and California.2 Subsequent legal challenge to Measure...

81 ANNALS EDITORIAL It is paradoxical to talk about euthanasia when we are hearing people dying all over the world without willing to die such as in Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt, Palestine and so on. Life is full of contradictions, perplexing complexities, and infinite possibilities. If you ask anyone if he or she wants to die most likely you will get an answer 'no'. On the other hand, we hear every da...

Voluntary active euthanasia refers to a clearly competent patient making a voluntary and persistent request for aid in dying (Brock 1999; Ogubanjo & Knapp van Bogaert 2008). In this case, the individual or a person acting on that individual’s behalf (physician or lay person, depending on the law of the country) takes active steps to hasten death (LaFollette, 1997). That active step can be eithe...

Absolute prohibitions of physician assistance in suicide have long been canonical in medical ethics, but a powerful reformation of views on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide is now underway in several countries. The law on physician-assisted suicide in the state of Oregon, social approval of euthanasia in the Netherlands, and the (in principle) legality of active euthanasia in Japan are...

Many people hold that there is an important moral distinction between passive euthanasia and active euthanasia. Thus, while the AMA maintains that people have a right "to die with dignity," so that it is morally permissible for a doctor to allow someone to die if that person wants to and is suffering from an incurable illness causing pain that cannot be sufficiently alleviated, the AMA is unwil...

This essay first introduces the moral sense theories of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith, and clarifies important differences between them. It then examines whether moral judgment based on the moral sense or moral sentiments varies according to one’s metaphysical beliefs. For this, the essay mainly applies those theories to such issues as stem cell research, abortion, and active eu...

388 Japanese religious groups 143 Shinto, 157 Buddhist, 58 Christian and 30 others were asked to answer questions regarding several forms of euthanasia in hypothetical situations and what they considered to be extraordinary treatment during the dying process. Passive euthanasia and indirect euthanasia were accepted by around 70% of the respondents. Active euthanasia was favored by less than 20%...