On the Blurred Edge between Life and Death: Acting Ethical in Borderline Situations

Julia Glahn

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On the Blurred Edge between Life and Death: Acting Ethical in Borderline Situations

于Exploring Issues of Care, Dying and the End of Life

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Julia Glahn

Julia Glahn
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类型:: 章节

Page Range:: 25–32

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848880580_005

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With advancing technologies in end-of-life medical care, what used to be known as a person’s death has become increasingly undermined. What used to be a clear-cut border, namely the one between life and death, has become extremely frayed. However, we are still depending and relying on the dichotomous distinction between life and death, when it comes to the withdrawal of treatment, the declaration of brain-death, and organ-transplantation. In my chapter, I argue for an overcoming of the either-or distinction between life and death as a background for decisions concerning the patient’s treatment. Instead, I suggest an alternative perspective: The patient’s needs and the abdication of harming her, may she be dead or alive, should be our focus point in order to provide us with guidance when dealing with moral dilemmas in end-of-life care. What follows is a concept of death as a process, precisely the last process in a person’s life. If we acknowledge this gradual/process-like concept of death with possibly unlimited stages, we can decide in a context-related way and individually what kind of treatment would meet a patient’s needs best in respect of not harming her. For example, for one person it could be the best decision to withdraw treatment and focus on palliative care. However, for a different patient, investing full resources could be the best decision. Equally, within this approach, ways of ‘treatment’ like euthanasia and physician assisted suicide may not be excluded options either. In order to decide context-related and individually, it is necessary to integrate everyone involved in the social relationships with the patient. For this reason, I will put social relationships and interactions among care-givers, families, and patients at the centre of my argument. That way I show how these webs of relationships form the groundwork for the decision-making process, and are primarily constituted by responsibilities for the needs of the other one, namely, the patient

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Exploring Issues of Care, Dying and the End of Life

ISBN:: 9781848880580

出版社:: Brill

印刷出版日期:: 29 Apr 2011

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On the Blurred Edge between Life and Death: Acting Ethical in Borderline Situations

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Exploring Issues of Care, Dying and the End of Life

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