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Intention, procedure, outcome and personhood in palliative sedation and euthanasia
  1. Lars Johan Materstvedt
  1. Correspondence to Professor Lars Johan Materstvedt, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway; lars.johan.materstvedt{at}ntnu.no

Abstract

Palliative sedation at the end of life has become an important last-resort treatment strategy for managing refractory symptoms as well as a topic of controversy within palliative care. Furthermore, palliative sedation is prominent in the public debate about the possible legalisation of voluntary assisted dying (physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia). This article attempts to demonstrate that palliative sedation is fundamentally different from euthanasia when it comes to intention, procedure, outcome and the status of the person. Nonetheless, palliative sedation in its most radical form of terminal deep sedation parallels euthanasia in one respect: both end the experience of suffering. However, only the latter intentionally ends life and also has this as its goal. There is the danger that deep sedation could bring death forward in time due to particular side effects of the treatment. Still that would, if it happens, not be intended, and accordingly is defensible in view of the doctrine of double effect.

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Footnotes

  • Competing interests None.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.