Dying
Dying, for most Americans, has become far more complicated than it once was.
A century ago, most people died at home of illnesses that medicine could do little to defeat. Now technology has created choices for dying patients and their families, choices that raise basic questions about human dignity and what constitutes a “good death”.
New technology and advances in medicine has created choices for dying patients and their families. Most people die in hospitals or institutions where the staff makes a valiant effort to keep patients alive until there is no reasonable chance of recovery. For others facing terminal illness, however, there may come a point where the fight no longer seems worth it. Those patients may find their wishes and those of their families Overlooked as physicians juggle medical, legal and moral considerations.
Court rulings have firmly established a patient’s legal right to discontinue life sustaining treatment, such as respirators or artificial nutrition. There is also extensive precedent for allowing family members to decide whether to continue treatment or end feeding when an incapacitated patient is no longer able to decide for themselves.
What is unresolved is whether individuals should be able to ask physicians to hasten their deaths and whether it is morally acceptable for physicians to do so.
Who decides whether a life is worth living or not? Should people have the right to decide when and how they will die? Should others—their families, their doctors, the government—be able to decide for them?
Although suicide is no longer a crime in modern societies, there is still a stigma against it, based on part on religious prohibitions and in part on society’s interest in preserving life.
What are the religious and moral questions here? For people in many faiths, these decisions touch on their most deeply held belief that life and death should be left to God. Not human beings. Others argue that life is to be cherished and not abandoned,...
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