Fantoms

EUTHANASIA

Here is an uncomfortable word that in neonatal medicine we prefer not to use. We commonly use the term ‘withdraw care’—a terrible thing to say when we actually mean moving from intensive to palliative care. While some of us commonly use the term ‘palliative care’, we all accept that discontinuing intensive therapy usually—but not always—leads relatively soon to death. We smooth the path of palliation with medication to alleviate suffering—but we don’t kill, or at least we don’t intend to do so. Probably. Now Cuttini et al have grasped the nettle of euthanasia as a legalised entity, and explored how medical and nursing attitudes vary across 10 European countries to this possibility. They found very large differences in attitudes between different countries, with the Netherlands and France being outliers in the direction of active euthanasia, while the UK sits much closer to those countries like Germany and Lithuania, where there seems little enthusiasm either for active euthanasia or for changes in the law. I don’t know whether to regard their findings as positive or negative, reassuring or frightening, and maybe these rather emotive words are the wrong way to describe the data. What I am certain about is that any debate on euthanasia is inescapably emotive, …