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66 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
206. What are direct and indirect arguments that occur in ethics?
Direct: focuses on the morality of acts and argues that they are intrinsically wrong

Indirect: Grants in a few cases, such acts may be justified, but oppose them based on their bad indirect effects
207. What is a direct arguments about physician-assisted suicide?
1. Killing is always wrong, no matter the circumstances
2. There is a difference between killing and letting die
3. Appeal to mercy is persuasive argument for physician-assisted suicide
4. Patient's autonomy
208. How is autonomy present in the relief of suffering?
Patients make a trade off between consciousness and relief of pain

Autonomy is relevant b/c not everyone accepts this trade off

*what counts as benefit or harm must be decided by patient
209. What is the difference between pain and suffering?
Pain is physical
(only one aspect of suffering so relieving it doesn't always relieve suffering)

Suffering is a broader, more personal matter
210. What causes most people to drive to kill themselves in Oregon?
Uncontrollable suffering
211. What are indirect arguments about physician-assisted suicide?
1. Slippery slope
2. Roles of physician
3. Financial empirical slope
212. What are the two general kinds of claims about slippery slopes?
1. Empirical: take first step and bad is released (uncontrollable)

2. Conceptual: once small change is made in a moral rule, other changes follow soon b/c of demands of reason fro consistency in treating similar cases similarly
213. What does Brook discuss in his article?
1. Is there difference between physician assisted suicide and A.E.

2. Is there difference bwt competent person giving themselves lethal dose and physician administering drug
214. What is the only difference that exist between P.A.S. and A.E.?
Who administers the lethal dose

PSA: the patient
AE: the physician
BUT in both physician plays active, crucial role
215. Who really acts last in both though?

How?
The patient

B/C patient retains the right to change his or her mind
216. What is voluntary euthanasia?
Competent patient make fully voluntary and persistent request for aid in death
217. What is involuntary euthanasia?
Competent patient explicitly refuses or opposes receiving euthanasia
218. What is nonvoluntary euthanasia?
A patient is incompetent and unable to express his or her wishes about euthanasia
219. What are the central ethical argument for voluntary A.E.?
Self-determination/autonomy
(presuppose some min. decision making capacities or competence)

Individual well-being
(life is no longer considered a benefit by the patient but has become a burden)
220. What does Brock argue about forgoing life saving treatment is letting die?
Confused and mistaken view
221. What arguments does Brock say people give for why euthanasia is the deliberate killing of innocent people?
1. Killing is seen as unjustified causing of death but in medicine it is thought to be done only accidentally or negligently (mistaken line of thought is all killings are unjustifiable)
2. It psychologically
uncomfortable to say stopping life support is killing (shift responsibility from agent to lethal disease; "letting nature take its course)
222. What are the potential good consequences of permitting euthanasia?
1. Those who want it can get it
2. End pain
3. End psychological suffering
4. More humane to end life quickly and peacefully
223. What are the bad consequences of permitting euthanasia?
1. Erode trust in doctor
2. Weaken commitment to provide best care for the dying
3. Threaten right to refuse treatment
4. A new choice might harm the patient (have to justify to others their choice)
5. Slippery slope
224. Should physicians be the ones practicing euthanasia?

Why or why not?
Yes b/c

1. They would be involved in some of the safeguards necessary

2. To protect against abuse, must limit the persons given authority to perform it
225. What does three things does Calahan argue against euthanasia?
1. Adds a new category of killing
2. Sanctions new view of autonomy (can ask others to help pursue personal goals even at cost to common good)
3. Changes role physician b/c now about happiness and not health of patient
226. Is euthanasia a matter of self-determination to Calahan?
No, it is a mutual social decision bwt two ppl (the one being killed and the one killing)
227. How does Calahan differ between causality and culpability?
Causality is the direct physical causes of death

Culpability is our attribution of moral responsibility to human actions
228. How are causality and culpability confused?
1. Confuse morality and reality when see omitted action as have the same causal status as one that directly kills

2. Confused when we fail to note that judgments of moral responsibility and culpability are human contructs
229. So how do killing and omission differ?
Omission (not treating) is not a cause of death, but it may be morally wrong

Killing should always (or mostly) be morally wrong - it is the direct cause of death
230. Is the common good diminished? What are the likely consequences of legal euthanasia?
1. Inevitably some abuse of a law permitting PAS (probably have low enforcement)
2. Nearly impossible to clearly write such a law (how do you define unbearable pain)
3. Inherent (conceptual) slippery slope
231. What should medicine do according to Calahan?
Relieve human suffering, but ONLY than suffering which is brough by illness and dying as a biological phenomena

Not medicine's place to relieve suffering that comes from anguish or despair at the human condition (this is what euthanasia does0
232. Are the alternatives better than euthanasia according to some doctors?
Not really b/c in order to improve quality of life they are undergoing all sorts of needles, wires, electronics, etc.

The dying are trapped in hospitals waiting for useless tests when they want to be at home
233. What is the dilemma in the situation of the conjoined twins in England?
They are joined and share one heart and one pair of lungs, if not separated both will die in a few months

The separation of the twins gives Jodie the change of life but means ending the live of Mary who cannot live as a result of the surgery
234. What was the parents' view?
Do nothing and the leave the fate of the children to God

Everyone has a right to live so why kill of one of daughters to so other can live

They did not want separation surgery
235. What was the religious view from the East London Mosque?
Life and death are up to God so on the basis of this it is better to leave them as they are then intervene
236. What did the bishop of Hulme believe?
That the surgery should be done

God's activity is at work in the care that the hospital give and skills of the surgeon to possibly give life from a situation where death is upon both children
237. What happens if all human beings are persons?

But what instead if parents are allowed the widest range of choices?
Then parents can never decide to forgo treatments

Then every family gets to decide for itself what person hood is
238. What did the Courts decide in this case?

Why?
Doctors could perform surgery against parents wishes

Separation is like withdrawal of nourishment for Mary b/c it interrupts her blood supply
239. What happened in the end?
Parents didn't appeal and doctors operated

Mary died while Jodie made steady progress since surgery
240. When is NOT treating justified?
Diagram(conjoined twins notes)
241. What occurred in the Johns Hopkins Case in 1971?
It was regarding Down Syndrome

2 of 3 Downs babies with intestinal defects were allowed to die

Only one underwent surgery
242. In 1971 what was the criteria made by Lorber to predict which spina bifida babies will die if untreated?
Higher menigomyelocele on the spine the greater the probability of attendant problems and death
243. What risks and dilemmas were there with this criteria?
If left untreated, not all infants w/ spina bifida die

For infants who live, nontreatment makes them worse off (treatment reduces probability of mental retardation)
244. What are the Baby Doe Rules?
1. 1982 - non-treatment defined as discrimination solely on the basis of handicap
2. Baby Doe Hotline - for alerts that babies were not being given medical treatment
3. Baby Doe squads - seized records and charts
4. After the Kerri-Lyn case Baby Doe rules were invalidated
245. What did the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act amend?
In 1984 they added that non-treatment is child abuse
246. But what are the exceptions to non-treatment being child abuse?
1. When an impaired child is "chronically and irreversibly comatose"

2. When a child is inevitably dying

3. When treatment would be "futile and inhumane"
247. What the Groningen protocol discusses earlier a good policy or a bad policy?
1. It was published that 8% of Dutch infants death each year result from lethal injection (many w/o parental consent)

Groningen hospital began reporting cases of infant euthanasia to authorities
248. What are the ethical issues regarding infant euthanasia?
1. Selfishness (reluctance is not necessarily selfishness but may be realistic)
2. Abortion vs Infanticide
3. Killing vs letting die
4. Degree of defect
249. What is the issue with abortion vs infanticide?
You can terminate pregnancy if sonogram shows baby has abnormality

Can't you can't let a baby die if they have same problem (i.e. spina bifida)
250. What are some problems with the potential for relationship standard in regard to the person hood of an impaired neonate?
It can be difficult to predict potential for relationships

A lot of this depends on attitudes of parents

Every baby would deserve a change b/c a person's potential cannot be known until his or her life is lived
251. What is the gradient view of personhood?
It rejects the all or nothing fallacy that an embryo or fetus is not a person one moment and a person the next
252. Can Mill's harm principle be applied to impaired babies?

Why?
No, if we consider impaired babies persons

His principle says that government should not intervene with decisions that put no other person at risk

If babies are persons then we are putting others at risk so the government can intervene
253. How should the criteria for non-treatment of never competent patients differ from the criteria for non-treatment of competent or formerly competent patients?
Criteria for non-treatment should be higher for never competent patients

Evidence should be beyond a reasonably doubt that they would not want treatment

*this would also be true for babies who are presumably incompetent
254. What are the three broad meanings of harm?
1. Baseline harm

2. Abnormal harm

3. Total harm
255. What is baseline harm?
It requires an adverse change in someone's condition

A baseline and temporal (time) component are necessary
256. According to baseline harm can someone who does not exist yet be harmed?
No

Because he or she has no baseline from which change can occur
257. What is abnormal harm?
It compares a present deficiency w/ what normally would have been

Someone is injured by being brought into existence w/ some defect that could have been avoided by taking precautions

The event or omission that causes the defect is the cause of harm
258. What is total harm?
A life of total pain and injury such that no hope exists

Grim ahh
259. What is a wrongful life suite?
Total harm in the law

The lives of some babies are so miserable that their existence is a tort

*Courts almost always reject these b/c it implies killing would benefit a child
260. What is wrongful birth?
Assumes abnormal harm, and claims not that the child's life is totally miserable, but that the child has been damage by being born less than normal

A physician's action or omission caused the relevant defect
262. Why should it be more difficult to decide whether abortion and infanticide are acceptable than it was to decide whether slavery was acceptable?
In the case of slavery uncontroversial moral principles settle the issue

It's agreed that no organism that has experiences, that's capable of thought and of using language, and that has harmed none, should be made a slave

*It is this that gives a being a right to life, a right to respect for their own choices and freedom
263. What properties must something have in order to be a person, i.e., to have a serious right to lfe?
An organism possesses a serious right to life if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity
264. According to Tooley a person has a right to life if they posses what?
Self-consciousness
265. Why is the "right to life" a misleading claim?
Because one is not just concerned with the continued existence of a biological organism

Concerned w/ the right of a subject of experiences and other mental states to cont to exist
266. How are the desires a thing can have limited?
The desires a thing can have are limited by the concepts it possesses
267. According to Tooley a kitten has a right not to be tortured but not a right to life why?
Kitten doesn't have a concept of a self so it cannot desire continued existence

However, kitten does suffer pain and hence has an interest or desire not be tortured
268. What are some problems with Tooley's personhood definition?
1. Does it rule out those who do not PRESENTLY have the desire (i.e. sleeping, unconscious, deranged)

2. Is capacity for FUTURE desire sufficient

3. Is PREVIOUS existence of desire necessary
269. If Tooley believes a newborn baby does not possess the concept of continuing self then is infanticide OK?
Infanticide during a time interval shortly after birth is morally acceptable
270. If this view is roughly correct what two worries are raised?
1. Where the line is to be drawn in the case of infanticide (solve by choosing some period of time like week after birth)

2. Whether adult animals belonging to species other than Homo sapiens may not also possess a serious right to life
271. What is a person and WHO IS NOT on Tooley's definition?
1. Physically impaired infants

2. Mentally impaired infants

3. Comatose adults

4. Adults of other species
271. What is a person and WHO IS NOT on Tooley's definition?
1. Physically impaired infants

2. Mentally impaired infants

3. Comatose adults

4. Adults of other species