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

死亡的权利意味着身患绝症的人有拒绝进一步治疗的权利。死亡义务是指身患绝症的人由于家庭状况或社会经济成本等社会因素而感到别无选择，必须拒绝治疗。对这两个伦理概念的探讨如下：1)深入的文献综述，2)调查问卷的开发，3)从调查问卷中收集数据，4)数据分析。数据收集自123名日本护士、医生和其他对生物伦理问题感兴趣的人，以及137名海外同行。大多数样本支持死亡权利；而海外对死亡义务的支持较弱，而日本则持强烈反对意见。对两组患者对死亡权利和死亡义务这两个主要概念的反应进行内容分析后，出现了主题，这些主题包括自主、生命的意义、正义、病人与家庭的联系和爱。探讨了这些主题在意义上的异同。

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.