Health Care Ethics Term Paper
Health Care Ethics Midterm
Chapter 1: Moral Reasoning
2) The moral issue of physician-assisted suicide is a fascinating case due to the dividedness among people who either support or oppose the concept. When looking at physician-assisted suicide through the four moral principles of bioethics, one might come to a better understanding of the issue from an ethical standpoint. Autonomy, a person’s rational capacity of self-governance, describes the ability to make one’s own decisions and direct their own life. With the case of physician-assisted suicide, autonomy suggests the patient has the right to decide whether or not he/she wants to live with a terminally ill disease, and they therefore, can request the prescription of a lethal drug in order to end their life. If a physician only looked at autonomy, then the result would indefinitely be to prescribe that patient what he/she wishes because they have the right to control their own life decisions. Beneficence, the concept of doing good to others and avoid giving them harm, could contradict the idea of autonomy in this case, since prescribing a patient a lethal dose of medication could be seen as doing the patient harm. Although the medication would be self-administered, the physician would be enabling the suicide, and ultimately causing the patient to die. Utility, on the other hand, involves producing a favorable balance of good over bad, producing pleasure and happiness. In this particular case, utility could used to argue that the patient is in pain and ending their lives would ultimately produce pleasure. If the patient has less than six months to live, and the illness is irreversible, than physician-assisted suicide could bring them overall happiness, since they would not have to live with the disease any longer, causing a better balance of goodness over harm. The principle of justice refers to receiving what is fair or what is due, based on moral rightness. In my opinion, this is the grayest area of the
Chapter 1: Moral Reasoning
2) The moral issue of physician-assisted suicide is a fascinating case due to the dividedness among people who either support or oppose the concept. When looking at physician-assisted suicide through the four moral principles of bioethics, one might come to a better understanding of the issue from an ethical standpoint. Autonomy, a person’s rational capacity of self-governance, describes the ability to make one’s own decisions and direct their own life. With the case of physician-assisted suicide, autonomy suggests the patient has the right to decide whether or not he/she wants to live with a terminally ill disease, and they therefore, can request the prescription of a lethal drug in order to end their life. If a physician only looked at autonomy, then the result would indefinitely be to prescribe that patient what he/she wishes because they have the right to control their own life decisions. Beneficence, the concept of doing good to others and avoid giving them harm, could contradict the idea of autonomy in this case, since prescribing a patient a lethal dose of medication could be seen as doing the patient harm. Although the medication would be self-administered, the physician would be enabling the suicide, and ultimately causing the patient to die. Utility, on the other hand, involves producing a favorable balance of good over bad, producing pleasure and happiness. In this particular case, utility could used to argue that the patient is in pain and ending their lives would ultimately produce pleasure. If the patient has less than six months to live, and the illness is irreversible, than physician-assisted suicide could bring them overall happiness, since they would not have to live with the disease any longer, causing a better balance of goodness over harm. The principle of justice refers to receiving what is fair or what is due, based on moral rightness. In my opinion, this is the grayest area of the