The paper presents different approaches to the relationship of life and death among selected authors as a review of their articles within the last volume of the Ethics & Bioethics (in Central Europe) journal. The resource of the review is an article by Peter Singer The challenge of brain death for the sanctity of life ethics. Firstly, I try to analyze the issue when death occurs and when we can talk about death as a phenomenon that each and every living (...) human being must come to terms within the course of their lives. Ethics of social consequences is used to analyze different approaches and states a conclusion defending the principles of humanity and human dignity within the scope of this ethical theory applied to various problem cases. I strive to support the question of the quality of life through the paternalistic approach of physicians influenced by their humane and dignified understanding of their relationship towards the patients. Ethics of social consequences offers many solutions to the discussed issues throughout the reviewed articles. (shrink)

Bioethics has been a very disputable field of applied ethics in the past years, which is caused by the frequency with which the term bioethics is used and, primarily, by the importance of the questions solved and increasing public interest. Many contemporary ethical and moral problems are based and rest upon conflicts stemming in bioethics. In the presented article, I will focus on the principle of humanity as a part of one of the most complex fields of bioethics. I will (...) use ethics of social consequences as a theoretical point of research into biomedical problems regarding euthanasia and the relationship between the physician and the patient, which will be used as a tool for solving practical moral problems and dilemmas within medical ethics (as ethics of social consequences comes from the situational approach) as well. The determining morality criterion and basic point of my assessment are social consequences of acting (other consequences – purpose, motive, decision making – are transformed into them). (shrink)