The Primacy of Autonomy in My Life Without Me (2002): An Example of Methodology for Medical Ethics

• Main Author: Antonio Casado da Rocha
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 2008-10-01
• Series: Revista de Medicina y Cine / Journal of Medicine and Movies
• Online Access: https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/medicina_y_cine/article/view/69

<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: Garamond,serif">This article proposes the film <em>My Life without Me</em> as being representative of the increasing importance of the autonomy of terminally ill patients in today’s society at the start of the third millennium. After discussing the basic moral conflict underlying the story, we sketch the contribution of bioethics to the configuration of an autonomist alternative to the traditional paternalistic model in the physician-patient relationship, using the work of Diego Gracia as a reference to clinical ethics in Spanish. To go further into the moral deliberation about the end of people’s lives, we address a version of the methodology proposed in 2001 by that author for the analysis of cases in bioethics, using cinematographic narrative as a particularly rich and versatile material with which to work.</span>