[Abandonment, therapeutic relentlessness or euthanasia]

Which standards and values should guide our conduct relating to death and palliative care? Who, in the end, has the right to decide whether or not to administer a life extending therapy to terminally-ill patients? Where exactly is the border between an ordinary treatment and an extraordinary or a relentless one? Should euthanasia be legalized or not? These are some of the basic questions caregivers and health professionals who work with the dying are now asking themselves. To delve deeper into these questions and help to find the answers, the author draws a collective typology of the main ideas people have on these problems. The differences between the various trends of thinking regarding death are explained. The author concludes with a plea in favor of the principle where the dying patient becomes the centre of the end of life and agony process. Therefore, it is the caregiver's responsibility to grant the patient the right to be informed, to ask for or refuse therapeutic relentlessness, or to die with dignity and serenity.