The Delegation for Medical Ethics within the Swedish Society of Medicine has taken the initiative to create national ethical guidelines on cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The reasons behind this initiative were indications of differences in the way decisions about cardiopulmonary resuscitation were made and documented and requests expressed by health- care professionals for new national ethical guidelines. During the process of creating the guidelines, a number of work- shops were held with representatives from the delegation and clinical experts from various branches of medicine. Several versions of the working document were sent to consultation bodies with requests for comments. We therefore believe that the final guidelines are well supported by the medical profession in Sweden. The purpose of this article is to present ethical issues on which it was difficult to reach consensus due to divergent opinions expressed by the people and organisations involved. The arguments for and against a particular point of view or wording in the text are presented. The main controversies were related to the following six issues; Determining whether or not cardiopulmonary resus- citation is beneficial for the patient – The presence of close loved ones during cardiopulmonary resuscitation – Performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation for the benefit of people other than the patient – Ambulance personnel’s mandate to decide not to initiate and to terminate cardiopulmonary resuscitation outside hospital – Limiting the length and content of cardiopulmonary resuscitation – Whether or not to specify a week of gestation before which cardio- pulmonary resuscitation should not be started.