Bioethical Issues of the End of Life from a Christian Perspective

摘要

The medicine has made relatively few studies regarding the death as a physiological process (natural death, through “program exhaustion”, possible but rare) and physiopatological (most deaths are caused by diseases), with the exception of pathological anatomy and legal medicine disciplines which are recognized mostly for post-mortem sequence; but death is not a moment (exitus), but a process which begins from the moment of the installation of the multifunctional irreversibility at micro and macro-functional level. The disciplines from outside of medicine are more implicated as philosophy (thanatosophy), thanatology (thanatogenesis) and theology. In the last decades, psychology, because especially of Elisabeth Kubler Ross’ work and of the consolidation of the concept, the spread and recognition of palliative medicine, reoriented somehow the interest of medicine towards the end of life domain. The three conducts in face of a terminal state subject – fiercely therapeutics (l’acharnement therapeutique), euthanasia, and palliative care, become themes for more and more actual discussions, not only in the medical plan but also in the ethical and political plan. On the other way, the medicine has rarely come near religion unlike bioethics which is like a bonding material between the two domains, which are, in the case of life ending period, in complementary reports. In the work paper the Christian theosophy regarding death, body-soul dualism and the teachings of the principal religious cults – orthodox, catholic, protestant – is largely presented. There are also cited and commented the essential texts of the Holy Bible, reflections of great theologians (Ware, Steindhardt, Staniloaie) philosophers, writers, physician (Heidegger, Cioran, Adrienne von Speyr, A. Soljenitsin, Elisabeth Kubler Ross, N. Paulescu, Ion Biberi).