Medical technology, increasing life expectancy, the growing belief that patients deserve to exercise personal judgment with regards to medical treatment, and health care costs have all fueled public interest in the “right to die”. Basically the right of an individual to maintain control over his/her death in the face of medical intervention. This is a privileged interest which mostly concerns first world Western nations. The vast majority of the world’s population lacks the luxury of input, much less real consideration with regards to the technological extension of life and, subsequently, a right to die. The very fact that persons feel the need to address the right to die is predicated on the acknowledgment that means now exist which may prolong life beyond individual and societal discretion.
Rather than sudden and rapid death following a lifetime of enjoyment and meaning, most people die after an extended period of gradually deteriorating health. There is almost always a therapy available that could prolong life. In fact most hospital deaths require someone to decide how long life will be prolonged and at what quality.
The present state of medicine in the United States has created potential circumstances for patients that only decades ago were unfathomable. Increasingly patients must face the possibility that the last months or even years of life could be spent in helpless agony and/or a state of mental non function. Sustaining life in a body that is irreversibly incapacitated, and perhaps without a mind, is no longer a “miracle” but routine procedure. Thanks to different sorts of medical advance, fewer people are dying young from heart attacks, which kill quickly, and more in old age from wasting sicknesses such as cancer (BMJ publishing group, 30-33).
The ability to prolong life raises a vast array of religious, ethical, and societal issues. Should.....
