Ethical Implications Regarding the Use of Biotechnologies in Terminal Patient Care

Abstract

Modern medicine has made a significant progress regarding the use of medical biotechnologies in order to support and reduce the suffering of terminally ill patients. The evolutions of the 21st century have brought new certanties in the medical field regarding the capacity to support or replace the main function of affected organs, offering new opportunities for end-of-life care. Thus, the use of technologies that support vital functions can offer the needed assistance until a patient is strong enough to recover on his own.

From another perspective, these contributions can lead to an addiction towards medical technologies and can significantly influence patients' decisions regarding their end-of-life choices. Studying the technological impact in the field of palliative care, Jessica Nutik Zitter also highlights a debatable area concerning the benefits of implementation of medical devices in end-of-life care, by observing a health worsening and a low quality of life in case of terminal patients who have excessively made use of life support techniques. The ethical and deontological justification for a reasonable usage of life support biotechnologies is the basis of improving the end-of-life decision-making process and reducing the frequency of painful and traumatic experiences caused by the excessive use of mechanized support of life.

The purpose of this paper is to determinate the ethical justification of the implementation of life support biotechnologies that lead to a mechanization of the death process. Therefore, we will focus on the moral evaluation of the relationship between technological capacity and the wishes, expectations of different categories of terminal patients, which will provide a major conclusive force towards more rational and reliable end-of-life decisions.