(DOWNLOAD) "Conscientious Autonomy: What Patients Do Vs. What Is Done to Them (Letters) (Letter to the Editor)" by The Hastings Center Report " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: Conscientious Autonomy: What Patients Do Vs. What Is Done to Them (Letters) (Letter to the Editor)
Author : The Hastings Center Report
Release Date : January 01, 2005
Genre: Life Sciences,Books,Science & Nature,
Pages : * pages
Size : 176 KB

Description

To the Editor: In "Conscientious Autonomy: Displacing Decisions in Health Care" (HCR, Mar-Apr 2005), Rebecca Kukla argues persuasively that it's a mistake to equate autonomy with the ability to make self-originating, informed, punctate decisions. Often, she points out, we defer to those who can reasonably be assumed to have more authoritative knowledge than we do regarding some particular practice. Deference and trust of authority are crucial virtues not only for patients who participate in the practice of health care, but for students participating in the practice of education, ordinary drivers participating in the practice of car maintenance, passengers participating in the practice of air travel, and so on. That uncritical deference to authority can sometimes be a moral failing does not undermine Kukla's point: genuine exercises of autonomy routinely involve trusting those who have expert knowledge. Kukla is also right, I think, to argue that autonomy extends beyond punctate decisions. On her thoroughly social conception, autonomy is not so much a matter of what I freely and knowledgeably decide now, at this point, but how a particular "we" engages in taking, assigning, deflecting, and ducking responsibility within a specific practice--all of which determines who is accountable in the practice, to whom, and for what. Practices may need to be altered so that the "we" in question can engage in them responsibly, as is revealed by her example of pregnant women willing to take the maternal serum alphafeto protein test despite lack of benefit to them or their future children.