Not all cultural traditions have the same conception of personhood. In Confucianism, self-individuation takes place only through engagement with others in the context of one’s social roles and relationships.
The experience of an English professor dying of ovarian cancer in Margaret Edson’s play Wit shows that both literary and medical discourse obfuscate and objectify rather than promote communication of “simple human truths” that dignify life and death.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(9):858-864. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.9.imhl1-1509.
When patient autonomy became a closely held value in medical ethics in the 1960s and '70s, the physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to deliver a given service began to be contested.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.