Os testamentos vital e ético como instrumentos para proteção da incolumidade psíquica do paciente oncológico

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to discuss the various obstacles faced by cancer patients, from diagnosis to treatment. In addition, special emphasis was placed on patients with terminal malignant neoplasms, in view of their autonomy to opt out of cancer treatment, i.e. a natural death, in the light of the principle of human dignity. The need arises to analyze life from the perspective of death; to understand the extent to which the dignity that is expected to be realized in "living" can also reach the exact dimension of "dying". This situation leads to an imaginative exercise that goes beyond the philosophical and personal, and therefore has legal ramifications, since it is up to the Law, as a tool for instrumentalizing life, to also define the parameters for understanding death beyond its effects. So the question is: how can the legal system be articulated - observing its functioning as a social system and distinguishing its ethical categories - in order to offer convalescent cancer patients in a state of vulnerability tools to provide psychological well-being for themselves and their surroundings in the face of a medically irreversible condition? The initial framework of the discussion - which proceeds in the light of the hypothetical-deductive method - will be based on reflections on the right to personality, which, despite being a fundamental right, is not absolute. The controversy consists of the conflict between the autonomy of patients with malignant neoplasms and the time and manner of their death. Thus, the "Living Will" and the "Ethical Will" have emerged and have been included in the Brazilian legal system as an instrument for the realization of autonomy and, consequently, the dignity of the human person.