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In many western societies health professionals play a powerful role in people's experiences of dying. Religious professionals, such as pastors, are also confronted with the issues surrounding death and dying in their work. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the ways in which death-related topics, such as euthanasia, are constructed in a given culture are affected by the views of these professionals. This qualitative study addresses the ways in which Finnish physicians and religious professionals perceive and describe euthanasia and conceptualises these descriptions and views as social representations. Almost all the physicians interviewed saw that euthanasia does not fit the role of a physician and anchored it to different kinds of risks such as the slippery slope. Most of the religious and world-view professionals also rejected euthanasia. In this group, euthanasia was rejected on the basis of a religious moral code that forbids killing. Only one of the religious professionals -the freethinker with an atheist worldview -accepted euthanasia and described it as a personal choice, as did the one physician interviewed who accepted it. The article shows how the social representations of euthanasia are used to protect professional identities and to justify their expert knowledge of death and dying.

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In this article the representations of suffering are analysed in the context of Fin- nish talk on euthanasia. The research data consists of letters in which ordinary people express their opinions about euthanasia, assisted death. In light of the data, there seems to be at least three distinct views people sustain about euthanasia, terminal illness and dying. The first is the denial of assisted death on the basis of Christian ethics and the sacredness of life. However, according to this discourse, pain and suffering at the end of life should always be alleviated. The second view on euthanasia is the approval of assisted death on the basis of unbearable suffering. The third way to talk about dying and euthanasia is a floating discourse in which opinions towards assisted death are not decisive but rather hesitant. The data is analysed by using a category-theoretical method and metaphor analysis.

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