A Study of End-of-Life Ethical Issues : The right to Die and The Duty to Die

死亡的权利意味着绝症患者有权拒绝进一步治疗。死亡义务是指绝症患者由于家庭状况或社会经济成本等社会因素，感到别无选择，必须拒绝治疗。这两个伦理观的探索如下：1)深入的文献回顾，2)问卷的编制，3)问卷数据的收集，4)数据的分析。数据来自123名日本护士、医生和其他对生命伦理问题感兴趣的人，以及137名海外同行。死亡的权利得到了样本的大多数人的支持；而死亡的义务得到了海外较弱的支持，而日本则相当强烈地反对。从对死亡权利和死亡义务的主要概念的反应的内容分析中，两组出现了主题，这些概念包括自治、生命的意义、正义以及病人与家人的联系和爱。探讨了这些主题在含义上的异同。

The right to die means that the terminally ill person has the right to refuse further treatment. The duty to die means that the terminally ill person feels that he has no choice and must refuse treatment because of social factors such as the family situation or financial cost to society. These two ethical concepts were explored as follows : 1) An in-depth literature review, 2) the development of the questionnaires, 3) data collection from questionnaires, and 4) analysis of the data. Data were collected from 123 Japanese nurses, physicians and others interested in bioethics problems, and 137 overseas counterparts. The right to die received support from the majority of the sample ; whereas the duty to die received weaker support from overseas and rather strong disagreement from Japan. Themes emerged in the two groups from a content analysis of their reactions to the major concepts of right to die and duty to die, and these included autonomy, meaning of life, justice, and patient-family connectedness and love. Differences and similarities in the meaning of these themes were explored.