Ethical Conundrum

Improved Essays
“May I Lie to My Husband to Get Him to See a Doctor?”
This ethical conundrum is about woman who has expressed her concern about the health of her 86-year-old husband. She assumes that her husband is undergoing early stages of dementia and claims that he refuses to see a doctor like she has suggested to him. The woman, who’s name is anonymous, asked for some advice on an online caretaker’s forum. A few people suggested that she should take her husband to the hospital against his will and lie about why she is taking him there. She should then have the doctor’s give him a cognitive test in order to find out if he does in fact have dementia. The woman feels as if it is unethical to trick someone into doing anything but also has the feeling that
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She then asks The Ethicist team the basic question, “May I lie to my husband to get him to see a doctor?”
Three members from the New York Times team replied to the woman with similar answers. One team member, Kenji Yoshino, tells the woman that if she hasn’t already, she should stop trying to persuade her husband to go to the doctor. Instead, she should try a more indirect approach such as “If you don’t do it for you, do it for me.” The team member backs his advice by claiming that oftentimes people do things for the ones they love before they would do things for themselves. Yoshino then says on one hand, he believes deception is unethical because the woman would be taking away from her husband’s autonomy. He also goes on to say that on the other hand, if her husband were to have dementia, his judgment is impaired and the woman
Mabes 2 would be ethically required to make the decision of taking him to the doctor or not. In this situation, it would be the Alzheimer’s depriving him of his autonomy and not the woman. A second team member, Kwame Anthony Appiah, gives the woman a piece of advice to not diagnose her husband but to realize that something else can be causing his behavior.

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