Paciente terminal: direito à vida e direito de morrer

Abstract

The objective of the present essay is to examine if the right to life also holds the right to dia worthilli that is, assuming that a terminally ill patient sustained by the principle of dignity as a human being, recognized as the fundamental right in our juridical system, may freely exert his or her desire not to be submitted to unusual medical treatments which prolong almost indefinitely his or her life, even when no cure is available and death is inevitable. Many ethical, juridical and mainly humanitarian questions are brought to light whenever it is discussed the existence (or not) on the right to die with dignity, allowing the terminally ill patient to consciously choose not to be submitled to a certain medical treatment or a therapeutic procedure. In this sense, could the practice of the bioethical principle of autonomy, allied to the fundamental principle of the individual's dignity, represents the act of disposal at the right to life? Are physicians, based on legal or ethical priciciples, obliged to implement all the means available in science, including the so celled unusual ones, to keep a terminally ill alive? Can the effective legal system, in force nowadays, be compatible with the dynamics of the scientific evolution, in order to comply with the wish of those who cry out for a worthy desth?