Euthanasia and End-of-Life Decisions: From the Empirical Turn to Moral Intuitionism

This article employs a "revisionary" intuititionist perspective to discuss the results of a clinical ethics study about intensivists' perceptions of withhold or withdraw decisions. The results show that practitioners' moral experience is at odds with both the discontinuity and equivalence theses. This outcome allows us to revisit certain concepts, such as intention and causal relationship, that are prominent in the conceptual debate. Intensivists also regard end-of-life decisions as being on a scale from least to most active, and whether they regard active forms of end-of-life decisions as ethically acceptable depends on the overarching professional values they endorse: the patient's best chances of survival, or the patient's quality of life.PMID:38662064 | DOI:10.1353/pbm.2024.a919711
Source: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Source Type: research