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Results for “Double Effect Principle”

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At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources
PubMed1994

Ethical dilemmas in the delivery of intensive care to critically ill oncology patients.

Caring for the critically ill oncology patient presents ethical dilemmas with which the critical care oncology nurse may need assistance. Understanding how values can be in conflict encourages exploration of alternatives. As health care professionals, one of our missions is to learn to make decisions using current knowledge about clinical problems and expected outcomes, value systems that affect our decisions, and systematic approaches to problem solving. Our challenge is well-defined.

Advance Directives↗
PubMed1999

Assisted suicide, suffering and the meaning of a life.

The ethical problems surrounding voluntary assisted suicide remain formidable, and are unlikely to be resolved in pluralist societies. An examination of historical attitudes to suicide suggests that modernity has inherited a formidable complex of religious and moral attitudes to suicide, whether assisted or not. Advocates usually invoke the ending of intolerable suffering as one justification for euthanasia of this kind. This does not provide an adequate justification by itself, because there are (at least theoretically) methods which would relieve suffering without causing the physical death of the suffering person. Carried to extremes, these methods would finish the life worth living, but leave a being which was technically alive. Such acts, however, would provide no moral escape, since they would create beings without meaning. Arguments seeking to justify ending the lives of others need some grounding in concepts of the meaning of a life. The euthanasia discourse therefore needs to take at least some account of the meaning we construct for our lives and the lives of others.

Attitude to Death↗
PubMed2000

Intention and responsibility in double effect cases.

I argue that the moral distinction in double effect cases rests on a difference not in intention as traditionally stated in the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), but in desire. The traditional DDE has difficulty ensuring that an agent intends the bad effect just in those cases where what he does is morally objectionable. I show firstly that the mental state of a rational agent who is certain that a side-effect will occur satisfies Bratman's criteria for intending that effect. I then clarify the nature of the moral distinction in double effect cases and how it can be used to evaluate the moral blameworthiness of agents rather than the moral status of the acts. The agent's blameworthiness is reduced not by his lack of intention but by his desire not to bring about the side-effect, and the 'counterfactual test' can be used to determine whether he desires the effect in acting. In my version, the DDE has its rationale in virtue ethics; it is not liable to abuse as the traditional version is; and it makes more plausible distinctions when applied to standard examples.

Abortion, Therapeutic↗
PubMed2001

Ronald Dworkin on abortion and assisted suicide.

In the first part of this article, I raise questions about Dworkin's theory of the intrinsic value of life and about the adequacy of his proposal to understand abortion in terms of different ways of valuing life. In the second part of the article, I consider his argument in "The Philosophers' Brief on Assisted Suicide", which claims that the distinction between killing and letting die is morally irrelevant, the distinction between intending and foreseeing death can be morally relevant but is not always so. I argue that the killing/letting die distinction can be relevant in the context of assisted suicide, but also show when it is not. Then I consider why the intention/foresight distinction can be morally irrelevant and conclude by presenting an alternative argument for physician-assisted suicide.

Abortion, Induced↗
PubMed2004

Medical ethics and double effect: the case of terminal sedation.

The use of terminal sedation to control the intense discomfort of dying patients appears both to be an established practice in palliative care and to run counter to the moral and legal norm that forbids health care professionals from intentionally killing patients. This raises the worry that the requirements of established palliative care are incompatible with moral and legal opposition to euthanasia. This paper explains how the doctrine of double effect can be relied on to distinguish terminal sedation from euthanasia. The doctrine of double effect is rooted in Catholic moral casuistry, but its application in law and morality need not depend on the particular framework in which it was developed. The paper further explains how the moral weight of the distinction between intended harms and merely foreseen harms in the doctrine of double effect can be justified by appeal to a limitation on the human capacity to pursue good.

Casuistry↗