Withholding treatment refers to not beginning a particular treatment, whereas withdrawing treatment refers to stopping a treatment that has been started: “Something temporal, by definition, distinguishes withholding from withdrawing: the historical fact of the initiation of therapy” (Sulmasy and Sugarman, 1994, p. 218).
Full Answer
Are withholding and withdrawing treatment ethically equivalent?
Results: In contrast to the guidelines, which emphasize that there is no ethical difference between withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment, not less than 50 per cent of the professionals in the ICU were of the opinion that there is an ethical difference. All attempts to justify this difference with reference to an inherent distinction between withholding and …
Should you withhold or withdraw treatment?
To withhold life-sustaining treatment is to "permit" or "al- low" the patient to die; withdrawing such treatment is actively intervening, and therefore "killing" the patient. Killing (i. e., causing a death) is, as a rule, morally worse than letting die (i. e., not preventing a death) [29].
When facing decisions about withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment the physician?
Withholding and Withdrawing Treatment. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in medical science and technology, doctors now have available a variety of machines, devices and treatments to keep people alive when an important body system stops working properly. Examples include breathing machines, feeding tubes, CPR and dialysis machines.
Will controversy continue to centre on withholding and withdrawing medical treatment?
Abstract. Withholding and withdrawing treatment are widely regarded as ethically equivalent in medical guidelines and ethics literature. Health care personnel, however, widely perceive moral differences between withholding and withdrawing. The proponents of equivalence argue that any perceived difference can be explained in terms of cognitive biases and flawed reasoning.
Abstract
This chapter resolves a long-standing debate. It examines what has been called the Equivalence Thesis in respect of withdrawing and withholding life-sustaining treatment (LST).
References (11)
A Morally Permissible Moral Mistake? Reinterpreting a Thought Experiment as Proof of Concept
Is there an ethical difference between withholding and withdrawing treatment?
While there may be an emotional difference between not initiating an intervention at all and discontinuing it later in the course of care, there is no ethical difference between withholding and withdrawing treatment.
Is it ethical to withhold life sustaining interventions?
Decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining interventions can be ethically and emotionally challenging to all involved. However, a patient who has decision-making capacity appropriate to the decision at hand has the right to decline any medical intervention or ask that an intervention be stopped, even when that decision is expected to lead ...
Withholding treatment and withdrawing treatment
Traditionally, medicine has been focused on extending life. However as death approaches, extending life may not be in the best interests of the patient.
What About Food And Fluids?
Towards the end of a progressive, life-limiting illness, people reach a point where they can no longer eat or drink. They may be too weak and unable to swallow, or always sleeping. When people become too weak to swallow, they may cough or choke on what they are trying to eat or drink.
Palliative sedation
Palliative sedation involves giving medications to make a patient less aware, providing comfort that cannot be achieved otherwise. A legal and ethical practice in Canada, its goal is not to cause or hasten death but to keep the person comfortable until death.