Question

how are attitude towards death shifting in light of prolonged and terminal illness?

Answer 1

Ans) Dying is a both a biological process and a psychological and social experience that occurs in a cultural context.

- Trying to characterize briefly the distinctive aspects of the dominant American culture that influence attitudes toward death and dying is a task fraught with the risk of oversim plification, overstatement, or even caricature.

- The dominant culture—as expressed in the news and entertainment media, the professions, and other prominent social institutions—tends to be loosely described as Western (or European-American) and Judeo-Christian.

- The United States is, however, far from a cultural monolith. The important cultural differences in attitudes and practices regarding end-of-life care exist within the United States, and these are often divided along racial, ethnic, and religious boundaries nonetheless, the committee's experience with various health care systems and its review of comparative analyses points to the influence on end-of-life care of an actively interventionist medical profession, a deeply ingrained public philosophy of individualism, and a general American unwillingness to accept limits—including aging and death.

- An unwillingness to let nature take its course" that often leads to an impersonal and unwittingly cruel "death in a technologic cocoon.

- The individualist strain in U.S. society seems to have become more evident in health care in recent decades and may, in some measure, be a response to excessive medical intervention. Traditionally, physicians have been guided primarily by the principle of beneficence (doing good on someone else's behalf) rather than by the principle of autonomy (generally acting in accord with the wishes of informed patients)

- Critics of this emphasis on beneficence characterize it as paternalistic, with too little regard for patients' concerns and values. The more recent ascendence of the principle of autonomy shows itself in the attention paid to issues such as patient preferences, informed consent, and physician-assisted suicide.