A Lens on Technological Dysthanasia

Technological dysthanasia reveals one of the central paradoxes of modern dying: our extraordinary ability to delay death can obscure the meaning of dying itself.

Dysthanasia occurs when a person’s biological life is extended by technological means without regard for the quality of that life. Thanatology—the study of death, dying, and bereavement—invites us to look beyond the medical moment and into the human one. Instead of, Can we keep the body alive? thanatology asks, at what cost to the person, the family, and the spirit?

When we extend life through machines without equal attention to the experience of dying, we risk transforming a relational process into a technical one. The language of medicine (“stabilize,” “treat,” “sustain”) often displaces the language of meaning (“complete,” “forgive,” “release”). In doing so, the dying process becomes depersonalized, and the opportunity for existential closure, connection, and peace may be lost.

From a thanatological viewpoint, the antidote is not resistance to technology but restoration of balance: bringing the emotional, spiritual, and social dimensions of dying back into the circle of care. It means asking what we are preserving, and why.

In this way, thanatology reframes technological dysthanasia as less a medical failure and more a cultural one: it is a reflection of our collective discomfort with death. 

The invitation, then, is to reintegrate dying into the realm of lived human experience, where technology serves the person (not the other way around). When we remember that life and death belong to each other, our interventions become gentler and our personal presence more whole.