The book strives for as complete and dispassionate a description of the situation as possible and covers in detail: the substantive law applicable to euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, withholding and withdrawing treatment, use of pain relief in potentially lethal doses, terminal sedation, and termination of life without a request (in particular in the case of newborn babies); the process of legal development that has led to the current state of the law; the system of legal control and its operation in practice; and, the results of empirical research concerning actual medical practice.
Politically strident debates surrounding end-of-life decisionmaking have surfaced once again, this time across the Atlantic in Italy. Eluana Englaro died early this year after a prolonged court fight, causing the international press to compare her case to that of Theresa Marie Schiavo, who passed away in 2005 in Florida after nearly sparking constitutional crises on both state and federal levels. In many respects, the facts of Ms. Englaro’s case are similar to Schiavo, but a close analysis of Englaro leads to the surprising conclusion that the Italian Court of Cassazione in that case actually enunciated a broader, stronger right to make end-of-life decisions than has the United States Supreme Court thus far in America.
ROMA - I punti salienti della legge sul testamento biologico approvata oggi alla Camera, che per il varo definitivo dovrà tornare al Senato, sono almeno due: le dichiarazioni anticipate di trattamento non sono vincolanti per i medici ed escludono la possibilità di sospendere nutrizione e idratazione, salvo in casi terminali. Inoltre, sono applicabili solo se il paziente ha un'accertata assenza di attività cerebrale.