Attitudes of Lay People to Withdrawal of Treatment in Brain Damaged Patients
- PDF / 164,564 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 52 Downloads / 132 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Attitudes of Lay People to Withdrawal of Treatment in Brain Damaged Patients Jacob Gipson & Guy Kahane & Julian Savulescu
Received: 19 November 2012 / Accepted: 6 December 2012 # The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Background Whether patients in the vegetative state (VS), minimally conscious state (MCS) or the clinically related locked-in syndrome (LIS) should be kept alive is a matter of intense controversy. This study aimed to examine the moral attitudes of lay people to these questions, and the values and other factors that underlie these attitudes. Method One hundred ninety-nine US residents completed a survey using the online platform Mechanical Turk, comprising demographic questions, agreement with treatment withdrawal from each of the conditions, agreement with a series of ethical principles and three personality tests. Results More supported treatment withdrawal from VS (40.2 % agreed, 17.6 % disagreed) than MCS (20.6 %, 41.2 %) or LIS (25.3 %, 35.8 %). Agreement with treatment withdrawal was negatively correlated
J. Gipson (*) Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia e-mail: [email protected] G. Kahane : J. Savulescu Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK G. Kahane e-mail: [email protected] J. Savulescu e-mail: [email protected]
with religiosity (r=−0.272, P
Data Loading...
