AUTHOR=Albore Marco , Sorace Letizia , Del Prete Sossio , La Russa Raffaele , Volonnino Gianpietro , Frati Paola , Bolino Giorgio 

TITLE=Reconsidering dependence on life-sustaining treatment as a criterion for assisted suicide: the Italian legal unicum in comparative perspective

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1657070

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2025.1657070

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=The legalization of Medical Assisted Voluntary Death, including assisted suicide is spreading worldwide, alongside the recognition of the centrality of the patient’s right to self-determination even in case of therapeutic desistance. In Italy Law-no. 219/2017 has granted patients the option of refusing therapy including life-sustaining treatments even without justification. The present paper offers a critical analysis of the legal-normative aspects and ethical-clinical implications of constraining assisted suicide to dependence on life-sustaining treatments. Reviewing some of the key bioethical-legal pronouncements, we discuss the current Italian system on assisted suicide in which dependence on life-sustaining treatment, even after the recent Constitutional sentences, is still one of the mandatory requirements, despite several critical profiles. Through a literature overview on medical life-sustaining treatments notion, the dependence on them is analyzed and assessed in clinical, bioethical and validity terms as a requirement for access to assisted suicide. From this it appears how dependence on life-sustaining treatment constraint shows overly ambiguous definitional boundaries, with the risk of inhomogeneous interpretations especially in the Italian framework. Interestingly, our comparative analysis reveals that Italy is a global legal unicum among the main international systems regulating Medical Assisted Voluntary Death; which, conversely, tend to target the issue on terminally or irreversibly suffering patients, independently of dependence on life-sustaining treatment.