• J Bioethic Inq · Jun 2012

    Review

    The moral difference or equivalence between continuous sedation until death and physician-assisted death: word games or war games?: a qualitative content analysis of opinion pieces in the indexed medical and nursing literature.

    • Sam Rys, Reginald Deschepper, Freddy Mortier, Luc Deliens, Douglas Atkinson, and Johan Bilsen.
    • Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Laarbeeklaan 103, 1090, Brussel, Belgium. samrys@vub.ac.be
    • J Bioethic Inq. 2012 Jun 1; 9 (2): 171-83.

    AbstractContinuous sedation until death (CSD), the act of reducing or removing the consciousness of an incurably ill patient until death, often provokes medical-ethical discussions in the opinion sections of medical and nursing journals. Some argue that CSD is morally equivalent to physician-assisted death (PAD), that it is a form of "slow euthanasia." A qualitative thematic content analysis of opinion pieces was conducted to describe and classify arguments that support or reject a moral difference between CSD and PAD. Arguments pro and contra a moral difference refer basically to the same ambiguous themes, namely intention, proportionality, withholding artificial nutrition and hydration, and removing consciousness. This demonstrates that the debate is first and foremost a semantic rather than a factual dispute, focusing on the normative framework of CSD. Given the prevalent ambiguity, the debate on CSD appears to be a classical symbolic struggle for moral authority.

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