In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

Increasingly, commissioners and providers of services for people with intellectual disabilities are turning to assistive technology and telecare as a potential solution to the problem of the increased demand for services, brought about by an expanding population of people with intellectual disabilities in the context of relatively static or diminishing resources. While there are numerous potential benefits of assistive technology and telecare, both for service providers and service users, there are also a number of ethical issues. The aim of this (...) paper is to raise these issues and to set them within the ethical framework proposed by Beauchamp and Childress. There is a need for a wider debate as a first step in the development of strategies to address the issues raised in the paper. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

In a welfare states, no typical user of health care services is only a patient; and no typical provider of these services is simply a doctor, nurse or paramedic. Occupiers of these roles also have distinctive relations and responsibilities as citizens to medical services, responsibilities that are widely acknowledged by those who live in welfare states. Outside welfare states, this fusion of civic consciousness with involvement in health care is less pronounced or missing altogether. But the globalisation of avery comprehensive (...) understanding of human rights, including rights to state-provided health care, will make welfare state thinking, for better or worse, more of an orthodoxy worldwide than it is now. Medical ethics needs to reflect this. (shrink)

Patients have not been entirely ignored in medical ethics. There has been a shift from the general presumption that ‘doctor knows best’ to a heightened respect for patient autonomy. Medical ethics remains one–sided, however. It tends (incorrectly) to interpret patient autonomy as mere participation in decisions, rather than a willingness to take the consequences. In this respect, medical ethics remains largely paternalistic, requiring doctors to protect patients from the consequences of their decisions. This is reflected in a one–sided account of (...) duties in medical ethics. Duties fall mainly on doctors and only exceptionally on patients. Medical ethics may exempt patients from obligations because they are the weaker or more vulnerable party in the doctor–patient relationship. We argue that vulnerability does not exclude obligation. We also look at others ways in which patient responsibilities flow from general ethics: for instance, from responsibilities to others and to the self, from duties of citizens, and from the responsibilities of those who solicit advice. Finally, we argue that certain duties of patients counterbalance an otherwise unfair captivity of doctors as helpers. (shrink)