Programme : Should ideology be allowed to trump patient well-being? : Abstract of keynote presentation
Moral conflicts reconsidered: Respect for the patient as individual and the duty to care for all
Professor Hille Haker
Catholic Faculty of Frankfurt, Goethe University, Germany
Medical ethics emerged in a systematic approach in the second half of the 20th century. It responded to the atrocities of German Nazi’s medical experimentations on the most vulnerable individuals and groups, but it also responded to new developments of technology based modern medicine. Up to the present, medical ethics has been established as an approach to establish moral standards and orientation in moral conflicts, which physicians, researchers, and nurses are trained to implement in their professions. Moral conflicts arise, for example, when individual patients’ interests and their well being must be related to the well-being of all present or future patients. I will argue that the focus on interests articulated by individual patients, which is based on an autonomy-based ethics, is insufficient to solve the conflict of respect for their rights over against the duty to care for all.
Email: h.haker@em.uni-frankfurt.de
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This conference is arranged by Cesagen at the universities of Lancaster and Cardiff and the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics at Uppsala University.