Literature on Death and Dying

"Tell me frankly, I appeal to you - answer me: Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but that to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death one tiny little girl who beat her breast with her little fist, and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears - Would you consent to be the architect under those conditions. Tell me and do not lie!" - Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov.

For centuries, literature and philosophy have been asking questions that medicine has only started to raise in the last few decades. Is it permissible to let one person die because the cost-benefit ratio is so unfavorable that diverting resources to other endeavors would benefit more people? Are we obligated to do so, say in a purely economic fashion? Should we not pursue the greatest benefit from the limited resources we have?

I'm not going to try to address this topic in this blog (to read previous posts, you can look for blogs labeled "death" and/or "philosophy and ethics"). But I would like to bring up the fact that books, stories, philosophy treatises, essays, plays, and poems have been grappling with these topics of contention for years. True, some may argue that the vagaries of fiction and the theory of philosophy cannot apply directly to real life clinical situations, but I think they can contribute to our knowledge, understanding, and way of thinking. Those of us who think of these issues should welcome the contributions other disciplines can offer in our understanding of the human experience.