Refusals and Requests: In Defense of Consistency

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics:1-11 (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Physicians place significant weight on the distinction between acts and omissions. Most believe that autonomous refusals for procedures, such as blood transfusions and resuscitation, ought to be respected, but they feel no similar obligation to accede to requests for treatment that will, in the physician’s opinion, harm the patient (e.g., assisted death). Thus, there is an asymmetry. In this paper, we challenge the strength of this distinction by arguing that the ordering of values should be the same in both cases. The reason for respecting refusals is that, in such cases, autonomy outweighs well-being. We argue that the same should be true in request cases, which means that requests should not be denied only due to the treatment being too harmful in the physician’s opinion. Our strategy is to consider and reject a number of arguments for the asymmetrical view, including an appeal to the doing–allowing distinction and positive and negative rights. The duty to respect refusals is still greater than the duty to grant requests on our view, but, by arguing that the ordering of values is the same in both cases, we show that there is less of a distinction in healthcare between requests and refusals than many currently believe.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 100,061

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
n/a

Downloads
37 (#501,397)

6 months
12 (#215,664)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Jeremy Davis
University of Georgia
Eric Mathison
University of Toronto at Scarborough

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A defense of abortion.Judith Jarvis Thomson - 1971 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1):47-66.
The metaphysics of harm.Matthew Hanser - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (2):421-450.
The metaphysics of harm.Matthew Hanser - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (2):421–450.

View all 15 references / Add more references