Requirements : 2 pages typed and doubled-spaced in standard 12 point Times New Roman font type and a bibliography. Should be formatted according to the standard MLA formatting. You may use any resources that you find appropriate.
Directions:
You are to select a current case case (you may simply Google with search terms such as current issues in biomedical ethics or the like) and then write about the ethical issues that are presented by the case. Once you have identified the ethical issues found in your chosen case, you are then to state how you would reason if you were the person tasked with deciding how to settle the particular issue. Note: your reasoning process should show some usage of an ethical theory (utilitarianism, Kants ethics,or etc.)
One potential helpful hint: Who, What, Went, When, Where and Why.
my topic
Family Members Disagree about Patient Care
the patient : Maverick Chenkus
The Greatest Happiness Principle:
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as
they tend to produce the reverse of happiness? ?John Stuart Mill
Happiness = pleasure, and the absence of pain
Unhappiness = pain, and the absence of pleasure
Happiness is the only thing that has intrinsic value
pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends
all
desirable things are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or
as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.?
Maverick was born with a severe heart defect, and even after two surgeries was in heart failure. Doctors had discussed a heart transplant with Mavericks parents, but at the meeting they said he didnt qualify for a new heart because he had a rare genetic defect that put him at a high risk for tumors and infections. A heart transplant would be too risky, they explained.
As Chenkus did her research on Mavericks genetic condition, she couldnt believe her eyes. Not one of the studies she read mentioned anything about an increased risk for tumors or infections. She e-mailed one studys author, and he confirmed she was right.
but the mother disagreed, she thought Maverick should get the transplant, but it didnt matter because Maverick didnt need the transplant.
If they went through with the transplant like the mother wanted Maverick would probably be dead.
There are few hard and fast rules to guide doctors as they select who will get a transplant, effectively selecting who will live and who will die.
And theres no question some will die. Last year in the United States, 321 people, including 19 infants, lost their lives while waiting for a new heart. Right now, some 3,500 people await a heart transplant, and the situation is only getting more desperate as the waiting list grows but the number of donors remains about the same.
In the face of such scarcity, doctors try to select the patients most likely to get the longest life, and the highest quality of life, from a new heart.
We have to be stewards of a very valuable resource. We want hearts to go to people who we think will benefit the most from them, said Dr. David Taylor, immediate past president of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation.
These decisions are, to some extent, subjective, as doctors sometimes disagree with each other about who should get an organ. Over the years, medical ethicists and patient advocates have accused transplant physicians of discriminating against one group in particular: the disabled.
We absolutely know this happens. Its a huge problem, said David Magnus, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University. Its real people sitting in a room making these tough decisions, and its not surprising their own prejudices and biases influence them.
If I was the doctor I wouldve declined the heart transplant too, bec