The book's main contribution is its interdisciplinary approach to the issue of sedation at the end-of-life. Because it occurs at the end of life, palliative sedation raises a number of important ethical and legal questions, including whether it is a covert form of euthanasia and for what purposes it may legally be used. Many of the book chapters address the first question and almost all deal with a specific form of the second: whether palliative sedation should be used for those experiencing "existential suffering"? This raises the question of what existential suffering is, a topic that is also discussed in the book. The different chapters address these issues from the perspectives of the relevant disciplines: Palliative Medicine, Bioethics, Law and Theology. Hence, helpful accounts of the clinical and historical background for this issue are provided and the importance of drawing accurate ethical and legal distinctions is stressed throughout the whole book. So the volume represents avaluable contribution to the emerging literature on this topic and should be helpful across a broad spectrum of readers: philosophers, theologians and physicians.

Inhalt
1.Chapter: Sedation at the end of life. Clinical settings, trends and current debate; Paulina Taboada.- 2 Chapter: Palliative Sedation and the Goals of Care at the End of Life; William Sullivan.- 3 Chapter: Clinical Aspects of Palliative Sedation for Refractory Symptoms; Paul Walker.-  4. Chapter: The use of palliative sedation to treat existential suffering:  a reconsideration; Aron Portnoy, Punam Rana, Camilla Zimmermann & Gary Rodin.- 5. Chapter: The Relevance of Double Effect to Decisions about Sedation at the End of Life; Joseph Boyle.- 6. Chapter: The field of application of the principle f double effect and the problem of palliative sedation; Alejandro Miranda.- 7. Chapter: The 'sanctity of life', 'best interests' and 'autonomy': An ethical and legal clarification; John Keown.- 8. Chapter: Palliative Sedation. Some juridical preventions for the Chilean case; Ángela Vivanco.- 9. Chapter: Clinical guidelines for the use of Palliative Sedation: moving from contentionto consensus; Blair Henry.- 10. Chapter: The case against clinical guidelines for Palliative Sedation; John Scott. 11. Chapter:  Ethical analysis of selected clinical cases; Paulina Taboada.- Epilogue; Paulina Taboada.- Index.