Ten Enduring Myths about Euthanasia Debunked

Abstract

Public discussions, both among scholars and lay people, on the merits and demerits of the legalization of euthanasia are often heated and emotionally loaded. But besides that, they also suffer from a number of misunderstandings, misconceptions, distortion of facts or even outright data manipulations. In the present paper, I identify and debunk ten such ‘myths’, falsehoods or mistaken ideas about a legal right to die, ranging from those that concern the definition of ‘dignified death’ and its manifold instances, to those regarding forms, frequency and likely effects of both present and future practices of euthanasia.