End of Life Situations: Religious & Utilitarian Perspectives

生命臨終處境：宗教與功利主義的觀點

Dr. Vina Vaswani ； Dr. Ravi Vaswani

《台灣醫學人文學刊》 11卷1&2期 (2010/05) Pp. 49-53

https://doi.org/10.30097/FJMH.201005.0005

並列摘要

Life and death are no more looked upon as mystic events. In India people looked at death as the final act to be lived through at home surrounded by near and dear ones, bidding final good-byes. Then progress ushered in an era of machines and tubes, which made it possible to prolong life processes. Often in modem medicine, we come across situations where life can be sustained indefinitely, but without a meaningful existence. Who should make such a decision regarding postponing the inevitable - doctor or patient? The Karma theory comes in the way of the Hindu and the Buddhist way of thinking which does not allow life to be cut short in any way. If life is cut short, then the soul has to take rebirth again to complete the cycle of birth and death, and can be redeemed only when all the karmic debts have been repaid. The cost of keeping a person on life support systems can be unaffordable to many families, yet some face huge hardships to continue on life support for a few days more, expecting some supernatural force to intervene. Although autonomy of the patient is venerated in the developed countries, in India the ground reality is different. The physician is tom between his duty to inform the patient on one side and the family's wish that physician should make the decision on behalf of the family, without directly involving the patient. In a resource limited settings of a religion-cultural pot-pourri, should there be a different hierarchy of bioethical principles? Despite, patient wanting to be on the ventilator for as long as he or his family wishes, in the event of his not affording, can we say the principle of utility takes precedence over autonomy? Our existing bioethical guidelines do not adequately address the utilitarian dilemmas. These issues need to be discussed in public fora, for more awareness.

並列關鍵字

end-of-Iife decisions ； utilitarianism ； religious perspectives