Abstract
While it is sometimes said that nothing changes in matters of ethics, anyone who would say that has failed to grasp the dramatic changes in the ethics of the care of dying patients over the past two decades. In North America literally hundreds of cases have been debated in courts, in hospital ethics committees, and in scholarly articles (Keyserlingk, 1979; President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1983; Cantor, 1987; The Hastings Center, 1987; Veatch, 1989). In Japan debates over the rights of patients to be informed of a terminal diagnosis have stimulated controversy that has reached the news magazines and scholarly articles of the Western hemisphere (Hiatt, 1989; Kimura, 1994). In Europe one country is still suffering the controversies of unconsenting euthanasia (Lifton, 1986; Koch, 1991). Another prides itself in being the first country of the world to develop a formal public policy condoning intentional mercy killing of the terminally ill upon request (Gomez, 1991; Van Der Mass, 1991; DeWachter; 1989).
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Veatch, R.M. (1997). Autonomy and Communitarianism: The Ethics of Terminal Care in Cross-Cultural Perspective. In: Hoshino, K. (eds) Japanese and Western Bioethics. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 54. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8895-9_9
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