Euthanasia: Current Problems in Japan

Abstract

I hope that people in Japan soon realize that the patient's free and repeated requests for active euthanasia to his or her own physician are essential and indispensable requirements for making active euthanasia acceptable socially and legally. I firmly believe that it is premature for Japanese society to accept active euthanasia now as one of the options in deciding how a patient wishes to die at the terminal stages of life. People must learn to distinguish the differences between active euthanasia requested autonomously by conscious patients at the end of life, mercy killing, where there is no such request, and death with dignity wishes of comatose and PVS patients for withholding or withdrawing care as specified in an advance directive.