Attitude of seniors in Taiwan towards the end of their life Dena Hsin Hsin-Chen (1) (3)and Darryl Macer (2)(3) 1 China Medical College, Taiwan; 2 Eubios Ethics Institute; . 3 Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba Science City, 305-8572, Japan Recently in Taiwan many elderly adults were sent to the hospital at the end of their life for their final days. With the full coverage of National Health Insurance, elderly people can prolong their end of life for some period of time with the intensive care of high tech medicine. We argue about whether this kind of prolongation of life for persons at the end of their life is morally necessary, both from the views of human dignity and social ethic of resource allocation. In discussion of the appropriateness of the norm to send persons to hospitals for intensive care at the end of their life, seeking the opinions of seniors is a good start to develop a bioethics that respects autonomy and also to build a social consensus of end of life medicine. The aim of this study is to obtain an increased understanding of how elderly people in Taiwan think about and approach their end of life. Data were collected through qualitative interviews with seniors over the age of sixty. To attempt to overcome the taboo on death conversation, interviews were conducted on their image of life. Through the interview seniors were led into considering their images associate with death. A sequence of questions about sickness and death, the definite end of life, what is a perfect end of life, and their expectations from medicine and biotechnology about their dying were asked to gather the general idea of their views about their end of life. This paper presents an analysis of the interview data, and also the findings as they inform us of the value systems of seniors in Taiwan. According to our experience during the interviews, the philosophical thinking about
