Our long-time experience in palliative care
allowed us to notice changes in ethics of palliative
medicine. In the handbook of palliative medicine,
its authors R.G.Twycross and D.Frampton in 1995
did formulate the following ethical postulate:
respect for life, acceptance of death of a patient as
an unavoidable event, respect for a patient as a
person, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice. In
addition, they stressed prohibition of euthanasia as
a rule. Nine years later, however, in the Oxford
handbook of palliative care, its authors:
M.S.Watson, C.T.Lukas, M.A.Hoy and J.N.Back
described their ethical basis, which were slightly
different but quite similar to those of
T.L.Beauchamp and J.F.Childers: autonomy of a
patient, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice and
the trust. Their set of principles may induce
controversy because of unlimited patient's
autonomy and absence of physician's autonomy.
Further, it may permit euthanasia, which is
excluded by palliative medicine
