Ethical Study On Abandoning Treatment Of End-stage Patients

Although the phenomenon that abandoning treatment of end-stage patients exists in practice, it lacks reliable basis because of the missing laws and regulations. With the improvement of people’s living standards, the pursuit of spiritual life is gradually improving. Even though they can regard it by the comprehensive and objective attitude in a way, and understand the choice to abandoning treatment of oneself or others, abandoning treatment is still faced with the question in ethics and law for the Chinese traditional perception. The taboo for death in traditional ethical thought still influences the majority people, even the “longevity” is the never achieved goal, and it is a timeless topic. In practice, however, it is lack of appropriate knowledge of death whether in the family or school education. The avoidance for death is difficult to make the right attitude and objective understanding for the death. When a person has to face the death, he always feels full of fears and tries to purse the surviving state. Filial piety of family ethics has become an important problem in abandoning treatment of end-stage patients. When it brings the conflict between individual decision and family, one always answer to the family for the influence of family-based. Therefore, this study focused on explaining the phenomenon that abandoning treatment of end-stage patients in ethical perception. Through the main theories and principles of ethics and Chinese traditional ethical thought, it analyzes the reasons and improves the right and objective countermeasures for the special ethical problems in practice. This paper consists of four parts; the main contents are as follows:The first part is an overview about abandoning treatment of end-stage patients. At present the scholars made the different definition, therefore, as an object of this study, it is necessary to give a definition for abandoning treatment of end-stage treatment. In addition, the paper analyzed the situation at home and abroad, in order to get a more comprehensive understanding.The second part is the ethical values of abandoning treatment of end-stage patients. This part will involve the ethical theories and principles. It needs to be used as the basis of analysis and countermeasures for abandoning treatment of end-stage patients in the last part of the paper. In order to carry out discussion in-depth on the issues, and improve the feasible countermeasures, it is necessary that part of the theoretical foundation compacted.The third part is the ethical dilemmas that abandoning treatment of end-stage patients must to be faced, and analyzes the issues emerged in practice. For the specific questions, such as the attitude of taboo death and the limit of patients’ autonomy, etc., the paper will improve the issue about caring the end-stage patients from the traditional ethics.The fourth part of the paper is a countermeasure for the ethical dilemmas improved by the third part. As combined with development of abandoning treatment of end-stage patients in China, it improves the applicable and operational recommendations in practice, by the basis of learning the Taiwan and some foreign countries.