PHIL 213 Quiz: Gampel-Summary
Document Summary
Over the past decade there has been a lively debate over whether hcps must provide treatments they judge to be futile, when the patients involved, or their surrogate decision-makers, are insisting on those treatments. A number of professional associations and hospitals have adopted policies on medical futility, to help define the category and to specify procedures for resolving disputes over whether a treatment is genuinely futile. What seems to have convinced so many hcps and policymakers is an argument grounded in professional autonomy: physicians, nurses, and other hcps should not be forced to provide treatments they consider futile. Gampel"s thesis: though influential, this line of argument has not received much critical scrutiny, so the task is to clarify and evaluate that argument. Issue isn"t that there are a large number of cases where hcps find themselves debating over the matter of medical futility.
