Archived: WMA Declaration on Euthanasia
Adopted by the 39th World Medical Assembly, Madrid, Spain, October 1987,
and reaffirmed by the 170th WMA Council Session, Divonne-les-Bains, France, May 2005 and by the 200th WMA Council Session, Oslo, Norway, April 2015,
and rescinded and archived by the 70th WMA General Assembly, Tbilisi, October 2019
* This document has been replaced by the completely rewritten “WMA Declaration on Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide” (2019)
Euthanasia, that is the act of deliberately ending the life of a patient, even at the patient’s own request or at the request of close relatives, is unethical. This does not prevent the physician from respecting the desire of a patient to allow the natural process of death to follow its course in the terminal phase of sickness.