Ethical Analysis On Futile Treatment

Current medical technologies can allow patients with futile treatment to maintain life byrelying on machinery in a period of time. However, such treatment can not finally preventdeath; moreover, patients have a high mortality and very low quality of life. Both the patientsand the society are hard to bear the huge medical cost incurred by these treatment. Therefore,many western countries laid down operational procedures about the withdrawl of futiletreatment. However, China hasn’t formulated unified regulations, so many futile treatmentsare still implemented, which raised more pains of patients and serious waste of medicalresources. Therefore, it is necessary and significant to identify and analyse the ethical issuesof futile treatment in China.This paper is as a preliminary attempt to explore the substantial and procedural ethicalissues raised by futile treatment especially in current Chinese social context. The author firstexplore the research background and main research questions of futile treatment and drawsthe following conclusions: therapy should be withdrawn when it is thoroughly ineffective;the withdrawal of futile treatment can facilitate to establish the new account of death and hasgreat significances in medicine, philosophy, ethics and self-cognition. We can see the strakcontrast that the countries of Europe and America generally have a higher ratio of futiletreatment withdrawal, while China mainly adopts the traditional means of comprehensivetreatment for patients. The following chapter describes and analyzes the concept of futiletreatment with explicit definition of the objects of futile treatment, then distinguishes it fromrelevant concepts. The chapter three focuses on the ethical analysis of futile treatment,identifying and analyzing the substantial and procedural ethical issues. The underlying andfundamental question regarding the ethics of futile treatment is the concept of person-how todefine life and death. As the first substantial ethical issue, the right-to-die problem is to be discussed, and then examines the relief of patients’ pain and slippery slope argument. It isobtained through the comparison of the ethical argument of futile treatment and euthanasiathat the withdrawal of futile treatment is in accordance with the purpose of the relief ofpatients’ pain and humanitarian spirit. Slippery slope argument can be utilized to analyze thefeasibility of the legislation of futile treatment. Finally the procedural ethical issue, that is,who to decide is to be discussed. The chapter four proposes the policy recommendationregarding futile treatment withdrawal in current Chinese situation...