Nikita Zorin, MD, PhD, Russia

MD, PhD, Russian Society for Evidence Based Medicine vice-president; Russian Philosophical Society member; French speaking psychiatrist association member; International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research member; World Federation for Mental Health member, Moscow, Russia

Killing me softly, or euthanasia as a product of liberal economics

What is really behind the legalisation of euthanasia and its rapid progress around the world? How is it integrated into the economic and cultural development of society? How did medicine begin to transform itself into its opposite, proposing killing on an equal or instead of curing, forming a whole class of professional executioners within itself? How did the replacement of concepts take place, creating an oxymoron: “forced good death”? Language games as a tool of perversion of meaning. What is the role of the psychiatrist, and is he capable of judging the intolerability of the suffering of those who are being put to death, their “free will”, their “awareness” of what they are asking for, and even more so, of what they are not asking for?