[Dying with dignity : an open debate.]

"Dying with dignity" is little more than a slogan until its meaning is spelled out in guidelines facilitating medical decisions that honor a patient's needs and wishes. The attempt to do this shifts "dying with dignity" to the center of a debate, as yet unfinished, on a series of issues. When should efforts to prolong or save a patient's life be stopped? On what moral basis should these decisions be made? How is the responsibility to take such decisions to be shared? If it is morally justifiable to let a patient die, why is it not morally justifiable to hasten a patient's death? These and other questions are still challenging society and professional communities to work out a defensible consensus to resolve difficult moral dilemmas in medicine today.