I live in the same world as others. And it is the seemingly same natural fact that each of us is born in the world and is destined to die. The present situation we are involved in, however, seems gradually to make this natural fact unnatural due to the great change directly or indirectly caused by the development of science and technology. For example, such developments make it possible for a patient, who would have died in accordance with the traditional techniques of medicine hitherto, now to continue to be alive by means of the respirator, or something like it in the I.C.U.. This situation raises a series of questions interwoven in medical, ethical, philosophical, and legal areas, as we can easily understand by remembering the "Karen Quinlan" case. Indeed, I know these are very difficult questions to answer. I merely aim here to find a possible way to answer them in the light of "nature" as a human identity, a naturalistic, but not a natural law approach.
