Killing the known dying: Notes of a death watcher
1991; Elsevier BV; Volume: 6; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/0885-3924(91)90059-d
ISSN1873-6513
Autores Tópico(s)Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
ResumoShould we define the objectives of medical care for dying patients to include active killing when suffering is painfully obvious?Our thinking about this issue is haunted by the competent dying patient who suffers the ravager of illness and requests "something" to hasten death.The argoments favoring mercy killing have traditionally been the following: I) It is more huoraor to end a painf4 !ife is a knoxo dying patient than to watch, over time, a protracted illness; 2) persons have a right to choose their own death at their own time: and 3) there is no moral difference between allowing a patient to die, as for example, by withhokling or withdrawing nutrition and hydration, and actively killing a patient, if death is the expected ootcome.Opposing views have drawn from the following concepts: 1) Life is a tit from God and it is &vays wrong to kill be&& of the MOCtitv of life; 2) the role of medicine is to seek life.odt death; and 3) the conqtteoces of legalizing medical practices towards mercy killing move us away from the moral absolute against killing and logically down the path of social abuse.These arguments are framed by revolutionary changes in our attitudes about death and dying that have occurred during the past two decades.There is the recogoition that death cannot be denied, and that there is a rational place for therapy that only reduces the intensity of symptoms.It is bemming accepted that therapeuric trials are appropriate if there is any uocertainty about the outcome, but there is no medical or moral obligation to begin or main-
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