PHI 2396 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Bioethics

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 2396
• Professor: Jonathan Miller

Document Summary

Futility: any effort to achieve a result that is possible but that reasoning or experience suggests is highly improbable and that cannot be systematically produced. Professional judgment that takes precedence over patient autonomy and permits physicians to withhold or withdraw cared deemed to be inappropriate without the need for patient approval. Futility: an objective quality of an object. Quantitative approach to futility: a treatment is futile if it has failed to produce the intended effect in the last 100 cases. Qualitative notion of futility: treatment that can work in some limited sense but has no practical prospect of achieving reasonable medical goals. Physicians are only required to provide medical bene ts to patients. Physicians are permitted but not obligated to offer other, non-medical bene ts. While there may be no long-term bene t in resuscitating someone if they are going to die in another day, the family might place value on that extra time.