Both health-care professionals and academics have yet to reach a common ground on the topic of the end-of-life. Politics which normally deals with diverging social claims and struggles to meet social "consensus", does not take a clear-cut position on issues referring to the fundamental right to life, health and human dignity. The law bridges the legislative void in relation to the end of life, while the role of ethics seems to become less significant in the effort to highlight the compliance of science with the problems and objectives of human existence.
Some of the possible answers to these themes as well as Advance Treatment Directives are presented in this volume. They are considered from different perspectives and moral approaches, in a society that is characterised by an increasing number of preferences, life-styles but also of social uncertainties. It expresses a new concept of subjectivity and claims, on the basis of a new autonomistic rationalism, more individualism, more freedom and more self-determination in all the spheres of life.

Carmine Clemente is a Researcher and Professor of Sociology of Health at the University of Bari "Aldo Moro". He is the Chairman of the interfaculty University Master Degree in "Sociology of Health and Health and Care Management". He is the author of several publications on health issues, among which, La salute tra assetti sociali e organizzazioni sanitarie (2010).
Giuseppina Cersosimo is Researcher and Professor of Sociology and Sociology of Health and Care Planning" at the University of Salerno. She is the author of several publications on the topics of health and illness, between these, Hygeia. Percorsi di sociologia della salute e della medicina (2008).