In the modern hospital, and in the present climate of increasing concern over medical costs, it has become fashionable to question the traditional duty of the physician to preserve life. Anguished relatives wait in the wings, expecting and fearing that death will come, and sometimes disappointed that it does not. We are urged to consider the needs of society in determining the type and amount of care we deliver. Ethicists and churchmen indicate their up-to-date orientation by proposing an action of 'allowing to die'. Grieving relatives, wracked by the strains of a terminal illness, write powerfully about the callousness of physicians who keep patients alive. Honestly distressed doctors sometimes talk of 'the right to die' with the fervour of a Rousseau declaring the rights of man, and increasingly take refuge in that Orwellian phrase, 'Comfort measures only'.
展开▼
