Eutanasia and distanasia: two extreme opposites

Abstract

When talking about death with dignity there are two opposite extremes that should be distinguished: euthanasia and dys-thanasia. While the first one seeks to accelerate death, the second one tries to delay or avoid it “at any cost”. Between both ends there seems to be a right balance, which this article tries to define as clearly as pos-sible. To do so, after a brief introduction where the collative and de-ductive methods used are presented (chapter I), the author analyzes the fundamental values of science and medical practice (chapter II), the care due to the patient, where the widely used principle of thera-peutic proportionality comes in (chapter III); developing this, the dis-tinction between ordinary means of subsistence, minimum cures and ordinary (or proportional) therapies take place (chapter IV). With all this background, the author can define what should be understood by “good death” and identify its unreasonable extremes, both euthanasia and dysthanasia. There is only an ethical and legal obligation to give a terminal patient the proportional therapies. The main conclusion is that killing a person is a disproportionate way to calm pain and dys-thanasia is equally irrational.

KEY WORDS: therapeutic cruelty, fierceness, dignified death, natu-ral death, Principle of therapeutic proportionality.

JEL CODE: KI, I12