“The greatest human freedom is to live and die according to our own desires and beliefs.” This statement is prominently displayed on the Death with Dignity National Center’s website and is the basis for their work in promoting a qualified terminally ill individual’s right to die through physician assisted death. There are currently 8 states with legislation allowing physicians to assist patient’s in dying, though physicians within those states are not required to assist in the practice. This captures the disputed nature of physician assisted death in America, with divided opinion among patients and the medical community. While physician assisted death is the broader bioethical issue this paper will address, more specifically it will focus
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In his book The History and Future of Bioethics: A Sociological View, John H. Evans narrates the advent of common morality Principlism and how it came to be the dominant force in the field of bioethics. When the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research initially formed in 1974, they were asked to “identify the basic ethical principles” that should guide biomedical research in order to prevent against various kinds of abuse. The principles the National Commission identified were: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Tom L. Beauchamp and James Childress worked to develop a bioethical textbook that would teach how to apply principles to any medical question relying upon the National Commission’s principles, though expanding them slightly. The newly articulated principles that would come to dominate the field were autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. These gave a standardized way to practice and make ethical decisions. Furthermore, these principles were deemed to represent “the common morality”, which was “only those norms that all morally serious persons accept as authoritative.” This assumes, then, that these “morally serious persons” are fundamentally concerned with and …show more content…
He describes the principles as “general guidelines that condensed morality to its central elements and gave people from diverse fields an easily grasped set of moral standards.” For the standard bioethics view, there is such a thing as common morality and this common morality can be distilled into guiding principles that will assist individuals in making choices. However, Beauchamp is also quick to emphasize that the four principles are not intended as comprehensive or even standing alone, but rather they require “additional interpretation, specification, and balancing” in order to formulate final decisions regarding a particular case. It is precisely this flexibility that Beauchamp argues is one of the benefits of common morality Principlism. He writes, “a model of balancing keeps options open without ‘flatly prohibiting’ them.” He uses physician-assisted death as an example of where physician-assisted death is banned “even though a significance percentage of both the physician population and the public believes that at least some cases of physician-assisted suicide are justified.” Beauchamp highlights the divided opinion regarding physician assisted death among both physicians and the general public, and for Beauchamp the principles work at their best when they allow flexibility in cases rather than a blanket
In his book The History and Future of Bioethics: A Sociological View, John H. Evans narrates the advent of common morality Principlism and how it came to be the dominant force in the field of bioethics. When the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research initially formed in 1974, they were asked to “identify the basic ethical principles” that should guide biomedical research in order to prevent against various kinds of abuse. The principles the National Commission identified were: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Tom L. Beauchamp and James Childress worked to develop a bioethical textbook that would teach how to apply principles to any medical question relying upon the National Commission’s principles, though expanding them slightly. The newly articulated principles that would come to dominate the field were autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. These gave a standardized way to practice and make ethical decisions. Furthermore, these principles were deemed to represent “the common morality”, which was “only those norms that all morally serious persons accept as authoritative.” This assumes, then, that these “morally serious persons” are fundamentally concerned with and …show more content…
He describes the principles as “general guidelines that condensed morality to its central elements and gave people from diverse fields an easily grasped set of moral standards.” For the standard bioethics view, there is such a thing as common morality and this common morality can be distilled into guiding principles that will assist individuals in making choices. However, Beauchamp is also quick to emphasize that the four principles are not intended as comprehensive or even standing alone, but rather they require “additional interpretation, specification, and balancing” in order to formulate final decisions regarding a particular case. It is precisely this flexibility that Beauchamp argues is one of the benefits of common morality Principlism. He writes, “a model of balancing keeps options open without ‘flatly prohibiting’ them.” He uses physician-assisted death as an example of where physician-assisted death is banned “even though a significance percentage of both the physician population and the public believes that at least some cases of physician-assisted suicide are justified.” Beauchamp highlights the divided opinion regarding physician assisted death among both physicians and the general public, and for Beauchamp the principles work at their best when they allow flexibility in cases rather than a blanket