The End, My Friend

Professor Buyx, who are you?

I’m a professor of ethics in medicine and health technologies at the Technical University of Munich. Some people know me from various honorary positions I’ve held, including chair of the German Ethics Council.

How did you become interested in ethics in general and medical ethics in particular?

To answer that, I have to go back quite a ways. I always wanted to become a doctor, and during my studies I had a lecturer who told us we could study other subjects on the side. I’d always had a soft spot for philosophy and the humanities, so I started studying philosophy and sociology alongside medicine – simply out of enthusiasm and a love for the subjects. And because I just thought philosophy was great. In the beginning, studying medicine is all about memorization, which isn’t very intellectually stimulating. But I quickly realized that medicine and philosophy go together beautifully – especially when you start asking: Is what we’re doing right? Should we even be doing it? Then I discovered that there’s an actual field that deals with exactly these questions: medical ethics.

Why do we need medical ethics?

For two reasons, actually. First, because of what we call frontier questions: Just because we can do something, should we? People used to simply die – now we keep death at bay for a long time. That raises all kinds of questions: How do we shape the end of life? Emerging technologies like genomics or AI in medicine also challenge us. Second, there are the fundamental questions: What makes a good life? What does a good death look like? How do we deal with the vulnerability that comes with being human? What do we want from society? What do we want from medicine? Many disciplines ask these kinds of questions, but we approach them very deliberately and through the lens of ethical theory.

Does awareness of one’s own life also play a role? 

Absolutely. That’s actually why I wrote the book. In science, we have finely nuanced, highly complex questions. Then there’s scientific policy advising, which tries to distill these complex findings into something useful for society – for example, to help shape public policy. But then there are other levels – and this became clear to me over the past twenty years in practice – that matter to each and every one of us. That’s why the title, Living and Dying, is deliberately a bit bold.

You already touched on this, but in your view, what makes for a good life?

Thank you for pointing out that this is a personal question – it really can only be answered individually. One of the book’s goals is to encourage people to reflect on this for themselves. For me, having children is part of a good life. But that’s not true for everyone – that’s just my own perspective. A good life also means living in a family, having strong relationships and taking care of them. Because I’m a doctor, it also means doing what keeps my body healthy, active and fit. Beyond that, contributing something – either to individuals or to society. Those are the areas that matter most to me. It’s not a random answer, either – it lines up with what research has shown us over the years and decades: that our relationships – not just family, but friendships too – are incredibly important for a healthy, happy life. And the idea of helping others is actually good for our health. In the UK, there are doctors who prescribe volunteer work to people with mild depression – and it’s highly effective. One last aspect is caring for your own body. We know that many chronic illnesses are lifestyle-related, and there’s actually a lot we can do.

→ Read the full interview in rampstyle #35 “There Is No Substitute”.