In an age of increased longevity and medical advances, a discussion over euthanasia is kindled in the last years.
The term euthanasia (Greek, “beautiful death” ) originally means that humans, who did not feel their life worth living due to outside influences as a right to a self-chosen death possessed.
In Europe, there are different ways of handling euthanasia determined by laws.
To discuss this complex topic in the range of this paper, it is necessary to circumscribe the content. In general, there are four different ways of euthanasia.
Active euthanasia means killing someone on his explicit demand, normally practised by physiscians with pharmaceutical additives.
Indirect euthanasia describes the medical therapy to avoid unendurable pain under accepting a shorter life expactancy.
The third way is passive euthanasia, which implies the abdication of life prolonging measures.
The fourth and last method of euthanasia is medically assisted suicide. In fact, this stands for giving someone the possibility to commit suicide, whereas the patient has to do the last step on his own.
To discuss and describe the different ways of euthanasia in a good way, we want to take a closer look to Europe, especially to the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.
This selection is based on the fact, that there are the three major types of handling euthanasia with the corresponding judical solution in each country.
In the Netherlands it is legal to practise active euthanasia by a physician with the corresponding legal regulations.

The law says that physicians are allowed to practice active euthanasia if the patient has offered the explicit, permanent, not influenced, well considered and free will to die. Further more, the physician has to prove and confirm that the patient´s suffer is constant, unendurable and that there is no chance to heal him. After this detailed conversation