Ross’s Prima Facie Duties (5 points)
Matthew is a terminally ill patient who no longer has the capacity to make decisions. As such, his family is making decisions for him and they are insisting that the doctor, Dr. Quinn, “does everything” to keep Matthew alive. Dr. Quinn, however, would like the family to issue a DNR (do not resuscitate) order because she feels resuscitation would cause much more harm to the patient than good. It is very unlikely that Matthew would survive resuscitation and even if he does, he will very likely not regain consciousness. In the extremely unlikely case that he does regain consciousness, he will be in severe pain from the impact of the procedure on his body, which is already very weak from his terminal illness. After explaining this to the family, they still refuse to issue the DNR. Dr. Quinn isn’t sure what she should do since she doesn’t want her patient to suffer unnecessarily.
(a) Using Ross’s Prima Facie Duties, what is Dr. Quinns’s ethical dilemma? In other words, which two prima facie duties conflict in this case?
Note that your answer must include an explanation of where these two duties come from.
(b) According to Ross’s theory, which prima facie duty takes priority and why?
(c) According to Ross’s theory, what can we do if someone disagrees with your answer from (b)?
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|
