Response essay on living wills and end-of-life decisions

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Danielle Ofri's "Living Will" -- response essay

Danielle Ofri's "Living Will" deals with the idea of hospice care attitudes in the situation of individuals who are terminally ill and who lost all will to live. Ofri apparently wants to provide her readers with the chance to get a more complex understanding of these people in order to determine whether or not society is right in promoting life in situations when it is pointless. The writer relates to a patient called Wilbur Reston with the purpose of exemplifying a situation when a person who has very little chances to survive is kept alive artificially. The fact that society pays a significant amount of money to keep such people alive is certainly intriguing.

Ofri is in charge of treating Wilbur and her job as a doctor makes it mandatory for her to consider all solutions available for her to keep this man alive and to encourage him to want to go further in spite of the fact that he is in a critical condition. The story is certainly probable to trigger intense feelings in most readers and some are probable to identify with Ofri as she embarks on a process of analyzing whether or not it is normal for her to put across an attitude promoting a will to live in Wilbur's case.

Ofri's text provides readers with the opportunity to get a more complex understanding of doctors and for them to acknowledge that being a doctor basically means being human. These people experience feelings similar to most people and in spite of their determination to keep their patients alive it is sometimes difficult for them to agree to legislations promoting the idea that terminally ill individuals have to be kept alive at all costs. The idea of imminent death virtually needs to be taken for granted and society has to accept the fact that hospice care is in many cases ineffective when considering things from a general point-of-view.

Ethics dominates the world of doctors and individuals in the field are constantly obsessed with doing actions that are morally wrong. In spite of the fact that they are trained to act rationally, they constantly have second thoughts about the decisions they make. Ofri's case is surely impressive and it would be wrong for someone to criticize her thinking. This is a human being who cannot help but wondering why society promotes particular behaviors as long as it knows that these respective behaviors reflect negatively on its well-being.