The Motivator's Dilemma

This case describes a retired and unmarried woman of 67 years old, who suffers from an unfortunate myriad of debilitating diseases that have led her to lose her ability to care for herself and live independently. Due to her misery, she decides that she wants to change her circumstances in any way possible, whether it be for improvement, or death. Those are the only options that she considers, as she doesn’t accept remaining in her present state. The moral relevancies here are the woman’s desire to change her circumstances and the potential dangers involved. Initially, to alleviate some pain, she asked the doctor to operate on the hernia. However, because of her other conditions, it was ruled out as being very unlikely that she would survive …show more content…
R check her into a hospital to refuse hydration and thus the burden of this eminent death will be removed from her home caretakers and the hospital will control her discomfort by medication. The people representing two opposing sides of the dilemma in this case are Roberta W, who desires a risky hernia operation that she will not likely survive; and the other opposing side is represented by Dr. R, who is her physician that is refusing to do this requested hernia surgery. This is a blurred case of active versus passive euthanasia, with some variation to the concept of active euthanasia, whereas Roberta is not destined to die from this hernia surgery as she has a great likelihood of not surviving this surgery; but she may survive this hernia surgery. The aspect of passive euthanasia is illustrated by Roberta’s doctor watching her dehydrate to death in the hospital with some discomfort …show more content…
The biggest moral dilemma for the doctors is from non-maleficence, since they would only accept treating her with surgery for her hernia if there wasn’t a high probability of the effort resulting in her death. Her caretakers appear to not have resentment and this illustrates a drive of