Death is a delicate subject, people find it difficult to talk about, especially in France where euthanasia is still a controversial topic. The subject was brought once again last year when Chantal Sébire, a French woman suffering from an incurable disease, wrote a desperate letter to the President in which she asked him the right to kill herself, to die with some dignity. This reopen the debate about euthanasia. Indeed, this practice is allowed in some European countries, like Belgium or Switzerland where some companies offer to “die with dignity”. At that moment, she got a lot of backers -we will see their arguments in a first time- but there were also a lot people against euthanasia –that we will explain in a second part-.

In her letter, Chantal Sébire wrote “there are limits to the suffering that can be imposed on a human”, and in her case the limits were fully reached. That is the main argument ; death is seen as a relief, the end of all the suffering. This topic was treated in the movie Million Dollar Baby, where the main character had an accident that left her paralysed, the movie make us share her pain, and we realize at the end that the only solution left seems to be death. Sick persons and their family agree that death means the end of the pain for all of them. The inability for the medical attendants is so unbearable sometimes that their are the first ones to speak in favour of euthanasia.

In the other hand, a lot of people are against because they consider this practice as a murder when other solutions may be found to avoid death. Some person may find in this the opportunity to kill themselves when they are not suffering incurable diseases. Currently, the suicide rate is rising in France, especially because of the work environment and stress, so if “death companies” would some day open in France, this may encourage some people to commit suicide while they may be helped to go through their problems. Euthanasia may also seems unthinkable because it