Proportionate palliative sedation and the giving of a deadly drug: the conundrum |
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Authors: | Thomas A Cavanaugh |
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Institution: | 1.University of San Francisco,San Francisco,USA |
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Abstract: | Among the oldest extant medical ethics, the Hippocratic Oath prohibits the giving of a deadly drug, regarding this act as an egregious violation of a medical ethic that is exclusively therapeutic. Proportionate palliative sedation involves the administration of a deadly drug. Hence it seems to violate the venerable Hippocratic promise associated with the dawn of Western medicine not to give a deadly drug. Relying on distinctions commonly employed in the analysis and evaluation of human actions, this article distinguishes physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, as acts that necessarily violate the prohibition against giving a deadly drug, from proportionate palliative sedation, as an act that does not. |
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