It is widely accepted now that a patient's right to refuse treatment extends to circumstances in which the exercise of that right may lead to the patient's death. However, it is also often effectively assumed, without argument, that this implies a patient's right to request another agent to intervene so as to bring about his or her death, in a way which would render that agent guilty of murder in the absence of such a request. But the right to refuse (...) treatment can, logically, have no such implication, and the mistaken supposition that it does conflates a right to die with a right to be killed. Confusion over this issue is brought out by an examination of conflicting opinion concerning the permissible termination of ventilation for mentally competent patients. A wider lesson may be drawn regarding the need for the ethical assessment of new forms of life-sustaining medical technology. (shrink)

Very often moral disagreements can be resolved by appealing to factual considerations because in these cases the parties to the dispute agree as to which factual considerations are relevant. They agree, that is, with respect to their basic moral standards. Hence, when their disagreement about the non-moral facts is resolved, so is their moral disagreement. But sometimes moral disagreement persists in spite of agreement on factual considerations. When this happens, and when neither party is guilty of illogical thinking, we have (...) a case of moral deadlock. (shrink)

Bioethicists think about families in terms of conflicting interests. This mistake results from an impoverished notion of informed consent. Only by adequately characterizing the process of informed consent can we capture the phenomenon of shared decisionmaking.

Nurses are often caught in the middle of what appear to be intractable moral conflicts. For such times, the function and limits of moral compromise need to be explored. Compromise is compatible with moral integrity if a number of conditions are met. Among these are the sharing of a moral language, mutual respect on the part of those who differ, acknowledgement of factual and moral complexities, and recognition of limits to compromise. Nurses are in a position uniquely suited to leadership (...) in fostering an environment that makes compromise with integrity possible. Keywords: compromise, integrity, nursing ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)