Ethics

Ethics Study Guide

Chapter 8: Medical Issues

Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Identify and explain key concepts of the abortion debate. 2. Summarize philosophical and legal views of abortion. 3. Distinguish between types of euthanasia. 4. Understand other ethical dilemmas in the medical field.

©2018 Achieve Page 58 of 116 in this context involves the obligation to enable patients to make choices and accept or deny information. For consent to be legally and ethically valid it must be free of coercion (the use of force or restraint). The individual whose consent is being sought must have the ability to make that particular decision, known as competence. 8.3 Abortion The legality of abortion has been a continually argued and controversial topic. Abortion can be defined as the termination of a pregnancy and destruction of the fetus while in the mother’s womb. 8.1 Public Health If public health is a major concern, one has to ask whether individuals have an ethical responsibility to the public at large for their behavior. This might include responsibility to use safe sex practices, providing information of infection with sexually transmitted diseases, the ethics of sex without using contraception, resulting in an increase in the number of unplanned pregnancies and/or unwanted children, and what each individual needs to do to contribute to the general health of the public. The ethics of smoking have become a vital issue of public health. In this day and age, we can say that everyone is aware of the health risks from smoking. The question is whether the active participation of the smoker really implies voluntary acceptance of the consequences, i.e., the risks of illness and death. This is again a matter of informed consent; does this individual know what any other reasonable person would know regarding the risks of smoking? One argument says that cigarette smoking is addictive, rather than just a habit. That does not mean that no one can quit, many have done so, but it does bring into question the voluntary choice, no matter how well informed. There might have been consent at first, but after an individual is hooked, the capacity to consent in any meaningful sense on a continuing basis is lost. 8.2 Informed Consent Informed consent is intended to promote and protect the autonomy of health care recipients. Autonomy