Ethics Governance
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| Article - Abstract. To view full article click on the article title. | |
MJA: Ashby, The fallacies of death causation in palliative care The fallacies of death causation in palliative care While the debate about euthanasia continues, society should focus more on palliative care which is clinically safe and ethically sound MJA 1997; 166: 176 Readers may print a single copy for personal use. No further reproduction or distribution of the articles should proceed without the permission of the publisher. For permission, contact the Australasian Medical Publishing Company Journalists are welcome to write news stories based on what they read here, but should acknowledge their source as "an article published on the Internet by The Medical Journal of Australia ". The most important thing is promoting the comfort, dignity and autonomy of people who are dying In studies which generated the first data on the incidence of euthanasia in the Netherlands,1-3 the practice was categorised as a type of "medical decision at the end of life", defined as: "all decisions by physicians concerning courses of action aimed at hastening the end of life of the patient or courses of action for which the physician takes into account the probability that the end of life of the patient is hastened." Two other categories which van der Maas and colleagues created were the administration of "high" doses of opiates that "almost certainly would shorten the life of the patient" and decisions in which "life-prolonging" treatment was withheld or withdrawn.4 In this issue of the Journal, Kuhse et al. report the results of their Australian study based on the approach taken by these studies. One line of argument advanced by those in favour of legalising euthanasia is to suggest that if doctors already cause (or hasten) death by stopping "active" treatment or by palliative interventions, such as the use of escalating morphine doses for pain control, they should not object to the administration of a lethal injection or the supply of the means to commit suicide at the explicit request of a terminally ill patient. Full Article: http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/feb17/ashby/ashby.html |
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2006 Ethics-Governance.com |
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