“Normal and palliative forms of treatment are the alternatives to euthanasia and therapeutic over-treatment, because “they really place themselves at the service of the patient and of families”, said Maria Luisa Di Pietro, president of the Association “Scienza & Vita” (Science & Life). She was reporting on the progress of the national campaign “Neither over-treatment, nor euthanasia” promoted in recent days by the association with the objective of “explaining the reasons for the rejection both of euthanasia and of therapeutic over-treatment, promoting access to palliative treatment and pain therapy” and “reviewing the aims of ‘testaments of life’ to ascertain their limitations and risks”. “Suffering – said Di Pietro – is not to be combated by eliminating the suffering person, but by properly accompanying him/her”. Di Pietro, a lecturer in bioethics, also explained that “it is society, and not the patient, that first gives rise to the need for euthanasia: it is society that first puts it into the patient’s mouth”. Palliative treatment, added Marco Maltoni, director of the palliative treatment department at the local health unit of Forlì, “responds to the concern to alleviate the pain, but also to be of help in all the psychological, social and existential aspects of the patient and his family. Those who confuse pain therapy and palliative treatment for the terminally ill with euthanasia – insisted the expert – manipulate the terms of the question with the aim of making people believe that so-called easy death is already being practised in a covert way today”.
