Killing and Letting Die

Jensen, Steven J.

doi:10.2307/j.ctt3fgpsr.13

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…This is not to say that someone's death cannot be intended by withdrawing life support, but doing so does not require such an intention. For further treatment on this topic see Jensen [17]. 8 This is also the source of the controversy over so-called "donation-after-circulatory-death" protocols.…”

Section: Death Requirementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…26 Yet risking this unsavory outcome is not unique to this position, since the majority of donors consistently indicate that they are willing to donate only if they are dead [102]. 27 If the critics have their way, vital organ transplant will become a deeply divisive 26 It should be noted that I think neither the case for equating withdrawing life support with killing nor the case against declaring death on the basis of total brain failure succeeds at all (see [17,[105][106][107] for some recent scholarship on these issues). I am currently agnostic about our DCD protocols, however.…”

Section: ] Similarly Miller and Truog Explainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As he saw it, this viewpoint "placed the concept of the sanctity of human life on a practical foundation" and should not be abandoned "in the face of advancing technocracy"[40, p. 33]. At the Ciba symposium, he even questioned the practice of removing organs before the cessation of circulation on the basis of neurological criteria and contended that the surgeon and attending physician equally shared the responsibility to protect the lives of potential donors in hopelessly terminal states[41] 17. At the time, he felt that the act of removing a kidney from the body of someone declared dead by neurological criteria constituted "an erosion of the historic medical creed of responsibility to the individual patient" [40, p. 36].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although his views would change over time to accommodate what is now commonly practiced in transplantation, this transition was not without careful ethical reflection on whether or not longstanding principles of medical ethics were being honored.Beyond Starzl, participants at the Ciba symposium took the deontic constraints on lethal medical experimentation as given. When Michael Woodruff claimed that there were "obvious limitations" on living donors as organ suppliers, the reason he gave was this: "no one can donate17 Guy Alexandre's neurological criteria for death, which he used in nine separate occasions, included "(1) complete bilateral mydriasis; (2) complete absence of reflexes, both nature and in response to profound pain; (3) complete absence of spontaneous respiration, five minutes after mechanical respiration has been stopped; (4) falling blood pressure necessitating increasing amounts of vasopressive drugs [...]; (5) a flat EEG" (quoted in[41, p. 69]).…”

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confidence: 99%

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How (not) to think of the ‘dead-donor’ rule

Omelianchuk

2018

Theor Med Bioeth

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Although much has been written on the dead-donor rule (DDR) in the last twenty-five years, scant attention has been paid to how it should be formulated, what its rationale is, and why it was accepted. The DDR can be formulated in terms of either a Don't Kill rule or a Death Requirement, the former being historically rooted in absolutist ethics and the latter in a prudential policy aimed at securing trust in the transplant enterprise. I contend that the moral core of the rule is the Don't Kill rule, not the Death Requirement. This, I show, is how the DDR was understood by the transplanters of the 1960s, who sought to conform their practices to their ethics-unlike today's critics of the DDR, who rethink their ethics in a question-begging fashion to accommodate their practices. A better discussion of the ethics of killing is needed to move the debate forward.

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Section: Death Requirementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ] Similarly Miller and Truog Explainmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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How (not) to think of the ‘dead-donor’ rule

Omelianchuk

2018

Theor Med Bioeth

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“…That argument has been challenged by Jensen (2011) and McGee (2014McGee ( , 2015. These authors follow McMahan (1993) in arguing that acts (and not only omissions) can allow a person to die.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Total Artificial Heart and the Dilemma of Deactivation

Bronner¹

2016

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

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ABSTRACT. It is widely believed to be permissible for a physician to discontinue any treatment upon the request of a competent patient. Many also believe it is never permissible for a physician to intentionally kill a patient. I argue that the prospect of deactivating a patient's artificial heart presents us with a dilemma: either the first belief just mentioned is false or the second one is.Whichever horn of the dilemma we choose has significant implications for contemporary medical ethics. INTRODUCTIONNew technology can lead us to reconsider old principles. The total artificial heart is one such technology, and the principles are two:( DISCONTINUATION ) It is permissible for a physician to discontinue any treatment upon the request of a competent patient.( PROHIBITION ) It is never permissible for a physician to intentionally kill a patient.DISCONTINUATION enjoys wide support within the medical community. PROHIBITION is controversial-as shown by the debates over euthanasia-but also enjoys considerable support.

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Getting Real About Killing and Allowing to Die: A Critical Discussion of the Literature

Stumpf

Rogalski

2021

bioethics

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The moral significance of the distinction between killing and allowing to die has played a key role in debates about euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Since the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment is held as morally permissible in the medical community, it follows that if there is no morally significant difference between killing and allowing to die, then there is no morally significant difference between withdrawing life-sustaining treatment or administering a lethal injection to end a patient’s life. Consistency then requires that voluntary active euthanasia (VAE) is also morally permissible. The debates over whether the distinction is morally significant have carried on for decades with little hope of consensus. We begin by surveying the literature to identify common argumentative strategies used in defending or rejecting the distinction’s significance. We observe, based on our review, that many of these strategies operate in ways that are conceptually removed from the concrete clinical situation of physicians involved in practices that lead to patient death (by withdrawal of treatment or VAE). We conclude by arguing for a novel way of moving the debate forward indicated by our reading of the literature, namely, by paying careful attention to the moral experience of physicians involved in end-of-life interventions to understand how they experience these practices. Exploring physician experience can reveal how the distinction may or may not be useful for moral deliberation and can provide the needed context to theorize about the distinction in a more empirically informed and practically useful way.

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Killing and Letting Die

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

How (not) to think of the ‘dead-donor’ rule

How (not) to think of the ‘dead-donor’ rule

The Total Artificial Heart and the Dilemma of Deactivation

Getting Real About Killing and Allowing to Die: A Critical Discussion of the Literature

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