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Trying Not to Talk Forever: A Tool for Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Susan M. Wolf
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Extract

George Annas’ review finds most of what is in the Hastings Center’s Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and the Care of the Dying “solid.” He takes no issue with the major substantive points. The fundamental premise of the book—that patients’ interests must be protected and their decision-making authority defended—is a view Professor Annas has long championed as well.

Despite this basic agreement, Annas’ criticisms would be significant ones if the Guidelines were what he presents them to be. But they clearly are not. As the Guidelines themselves state: These are ethics guidelines; they are not legal guidelines. They are an attempt to offer practical and reasonably concise suggestions for how to make decisions; they are no substitute for the literature on the pros and cons of different approaches to the termination of treatment. They are meant to provoke a necessary process of debate within a health care institution; they are not the final moral truth.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , Winter 1987 , pp. 248 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1987

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References

The author would like to thank Daniel Callahan, Alex Capron, Joanne Lynn, and Alan Weisbard for helpful discussion, and the Greenwall Foundation for support.Google Scholar
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