Recommending Peaceful Death

Ishitobi Kozo

doi:10.4091/iken.25.59

Now, more than ever, we need to think about how we will meet our end. Various life-prolonging treatments are progressively being developed. Our healthcare system is based on universal health insurance coverage. The peaceful nation of Japan has become a society with the world’s highest life expectancy. Although we should be able to choose how we meet our end, we no longer understand how far medical care should intervene.<br>We humans are creatures of nature. We will all decline with advancing age and ultimately cease even to be able to eat for ourselves. That is because the body is about to cease living. The amount of hydration and nutrition that we need will gradually decrease. We are going to die, so we do not need it anymore. The less is inside us, the more peacefully we can die.<br>Humankind has known since ancient times that dying of old age is the most peaceful of deaths. However, we in modern times have come to regard death as a taboo, obsessively trying to avoid the reality before our eyes and believing that a dying person will go on living if we give them an infusion or a gastrostomy feeding tube, even though it prolongs the agony.<br>Medicine was originally a science for people. Right now, we have reached the point where we need to consider approaches to medical care during the final chapter of our lives. The term“ peaceful death,” which I myself coined, advocates that if treatment aimed solely at prolonging life is meaningless, we should not hold people liable for withholding such treatment.<br>It is the law of nature that we live and then die, and modern medicine will be complete once we develop the ability to adjust medical care in old age.

Recommending Peaceful Death

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