Edited by
DIETER BIRNBACHER
EDGAR DAHL

2008

Physician-Assisted Suicide and Public Policy. An International Perspective

Interest in euthanasia has continually grown during the last decades all over the world, especially in the industrialised countries with their high standards of medical care. This growing interest seems to be in exact proportion to two tendencies: the increased capacities of modern medicine to maintain life-functions in states of terminal disease and severe impairment of bodily and mental functions; and the tendency of physicians to preserve life in situations of imminent death at the cost of severe suffering and loss of independence.