Death, ethical judgments and dignity

Death, Dignity, and Respect

Death Without Dignity

T he present health care environment conflicts with the values in· ternalized by many clinicians Patient care seems to be subordinated to a set of rules governing the length of hos· pitalization. The decision makers in health care seem to take a clerical rather than a clinical perspective. As one frustrated clinician exclaimed, "Forget TLC; it's DRGs that count." Although the feelings in this t...

Death with dignity.

In recent years a succession of writers has lamented that a society which has the highest standard of living should also have the lowest standard of dying. Death, they maintain, has replaced sex as the most unmentionable taboo, and the act of dying has become lonely, mechanical, dehumanised, and at times gruesome.' Some have referred to the "obscenity of modern dying," exemplified by an imperso...

[Death, dignity and advance directives].

Dignity and death: a reply.

Some form of utilitarian approach can be discerned as underlying much current medical ethical decision-making. Criticisms of the practical effects of such an approach are not parried by asserting the fundamental strengths of utilitarianism as theory.