Ethics Paper
Ethics are the core guiding factors that determine the interactions of people in a particular community. They are the scale of what is right and wrong. They, however, change from one community to another depending on the beliefs of the community. What may seem right in one community may be wrong in another. Such a situation is called an ethical dilemma, and people have to choose between an action that seems unethical in one way yet ethical in another. Based on the situations that may arise as explained above, some theories have been made to solve such issues. This paper will anise the issue of active euthanasia using both Kantian Theory and Utilitarianism.
AFFIRMATION
The theory considered is Kant’s Universalization theory. It is the idea that following the optimific moral code is the best way to take any action since it is likely to lead to a positive result. The theory was suggested by Immanuel Kant, who says that people need to consider the means used to get to a result. The methods used to get an outcome are supposed to be ethical and not breaking any moral rules. To understand the reason why the idea of active euthanasia is right, one may look at a well-known case of a medical Dilemma. The case is indexed as Scardoni Vs. HawryLuck and is explained below.
It is the case of a patient who is 81 years old. The patient Joyce Holland suffers from Aspiration pneumonia, which causes food to move into her lungs instead of her stomach. This causes the old woman to be admitted to the Intensive Care Unit, and after treatment, her condition improves for a short time, after which she is diagnosed with an infection in her feeding tube. She is moved into a ward where she continues to have fevers and infections and requires lung suctioning every 45 minutes. The medical team taking care of her suggests that her condition is not likely to improve, and she should thus be given painkillers and sedatives until she succumbs to the illness. Her daughters Margaret and Patricia, however, disagree with the doctors and finally win the petition. Mrs. Holland stays in the intensive care unit and eventually but dies a year later.
The philosopher Kant argued that al the actions that the people partake in are supposed to be guided by moral principles (Cahn, 2009). In that case, all the means that are used to achieve an outcome matter. One is not supposed to violate an ethical code of conduct. He argued that the driving force to do anything is supposed to be goodwill. The intention that a person has is the core determinant of whether the action is ethical or not. If all principles guide one, then the act, no matter how good it is not allowed. It would have been best if the patient remained in the hospital.
According to the Autonomous theory on ethics, whether or not the medication should be stopped was in Mrs. Holland’s hands. However, due to her condition and inability to speak and express her ideas, the obligation thus falls on her two daughters Patricia and Margaret. The medical team acts according to rule utilitarianism, where the doctor, Mr. Hawryluck, suggests that the patient is taken out of the ICU and instead be offered treatment that is far less expensive. The decision would mean that the patient would experience less pain and even predicted that the woman would die within six months, even under treatment. However, the daughters act irrationally by going to the court and going against Mr. Hawryluck’s suggestion.
The court rules that Mrs. Holland is returned to the ICU. This is expensive since the daughters have to pay 1500 dollars per day. This is a waste of the daughter’s resources since the lady has no hope of getting better. It also uses up many hospital resources, and a lot of labor and time is spent taking care of her when she is in hospital. If the daughters had allowed Dr. Hawryluck’s suggestion, the resources that the hospital uses up would have been directed to cases of people who had higher chances of survival rather than on the lady whose condition was not showing signs of hope even after treatment.
COUNTER ARGUMENT
Ending the treatment for Mrs. Holland would also mean that she lives the last moments of her life with dignity and at the comfort of her home, where she would get the needed support from her daughters or even private nurses. According to the beneficence theory, which mainly aims at benefitting the patient and those close to her, the administration of sedatives and pain relievers would help reduce pain since the doctors already oversaw that the lady had about six months to live even under treatment in the ICU. This would make her last days painless as she would be given pain-relieving drugs and sedatives.
Moreover, it would reduce stress for her family since they know that she is not in pain. It is very stressful to know that one’s relative is in pain, and the treatment may not yield the expected results of healing. It also keeps Mrs. Hollands’ family on the edge since they do not know the drugs’ reaction to her. The daughters’ action is a big gamble since they only act in consideration of their personal feelings and religious intuitions rather than considering the great effort that is needed to keep her in the hospital.
The community expects a person’s medical care to outweigh the harm it does to a patient. In this case, giving the lady medical attention in the ICU only seems to prolong her agony. In cases where fate is already decided, society expects that the patient will have peace in their last days rather than painful and stressing conditions that are not likely to yield in the healing of the patient. The community around may also consider the lady’s responsibility to her family and society at large.
CONCLUSION
Health ethics are the guiding principles that run the medical sector. The ethics form a foundation for decision making and proper treatment of patients while in the hospital. Moreover, ethics help resolve contradicting situations depending on which side of the ethics weighs more on a patient’s treatment. In analyzing a situation at hand, we look at three main aspects: public policy ethics, clinical ethics, and applied medical ethics.
Public policy ethics mainly describes the policies that may affect large groups of people. A good example of this policy is age-based rationing, which involves reducing the number of facilities and technological knowledge spent on people above a certain age limit, e.g., 80 years. Secondly, clinical ethics theories focus on the outcomes of patients’ decisions and their effects on their families, such as the removal of life-sustaining treatment on patients.
Works Cited
Donaldson, Stitch. Stitch Donaldson, Chapter 14. Brandonderbigny@Yahoo.Com, 2020, pp. 287-308. Accessed 13 Oct 2020.