[From absolute necessity of dying to preventive planning of dying? The change of social and medicine debates on dying in the 1980s].

International euthanasia debates focussing on "autonomous dying" in the 1980s corresponded with a general change in the health-care system: availability of new technical means with an analogous medical-ethic understanding of human suffering and dying. This change is part of a general development from "passive health consumption" to "active prevention" in our society.