Kantian Utilitarianism And Virtue Ethics Analysis

In the medical field, there are many tricky ethical situations in which the correct moral decision a physician should make in regards to a patient may not be clear. An example of this is a physician deciding to tell the family of a young boy who is dying and needs a kidney transplant that his father is a direct tissue match despite the father’s requests to not share this information with the family. Ethicists of the three branches of bioethics: Kantian, utilitarian, and virtue would all have distinct views on the morally correct decision that this physician should make.
Kantian ethicists would believe that it is wrong for the physician to hold this information from the family, but there would be some disagreement between Kanitans on whether the doctor should recommend that the father serve as an organ donor for his son in the first place. A Kantian would apply the universalizability law to test the morality of …show more content…
A Kantian ethicist would apply the maxim that lying is bad as part of a universal law. Most utilitarians would calculate that the most good comes to the most people from telling the truth in this case. Finally, a virtue ethicist would believe that if the doctor tells the family about the tissue compatibility he is demonstrating strong moral character since he is enacting the virtue of truthfulness and the possibility of a heroic action that could result of telling the truth. The problem in this case is that the doctor has an obligation to tell the truth to this boy’s family while still protecting the privacy of the father’s medical information. A compromise that would satisfy both obligations of the doctor would be to explain to the family that he cannot share the information regarding the tissue results because the father is also a patient and he must respect his