This paper analyzes the biopolitical construction of ethical criteria adopted when providing end-of-life care. The evaluation of how medical knowledge prescriptions are applied to patients’ living bodies, and how legal power prescriptions are applied to health professionals’ living bodies, evidenced that medical practice undergoes a double dilemma: on the one hand, the lack of criteria for the choice of non-curative treatment; on the other, the technological blurring of the demarcation line between life and death. This insecurity turns the hospital environment into a state of exception, where all of us become exposed to the violence of a force-of-law directly applied to our bodies as bare life. Using the Brazilian legislation as a singular starting point, general concepts are discussed reflecting current paradigms in end-of-life care.