Dostoevsky and DNR Orders: Accountability, Deniability and Moral Responsibility

STANFORD UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR BIOMEDICAL ETHICS

PRESENTS BIOMEDICAL ETHICS GRAND ROUNDS

WINTER/SPRING 2005

Tuesday, February 1, 2004

8 am — 9 am

Clark Center Auditorium

Dostoevsky and DNR Orders:

Accountability, Deniability and Moral Responsibility

JOHN LANTOS, M.D.

University of Chicago

Philosophic and legal analyses of medical decision-making begin with the notion of individual accountability for decisions. Derived from the philosophic principle of autonomy, these approaches seek to identify a competent medical decision maker and to invest that person with the authority to make decisions and the accountability for those decisions. Literary accounts of decision making suggest a different moral focus that might be preferable for tragic choices — that instead of individual autonomy and accountability, people long for diffused responsibility and deniability. This shift in moral focus has practical implications for the way clinicians approach discussions with families about end-of-life decisions.

John Lantos, M.D., is Professor of Pediatrics and Division Chief of General Pediatrics at The University of Chicago. He is also the Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. He has been President of The American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics and The American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. Dr. Lantos most recent book, Neonatal Bioethics: A Bioethics Success Story, will be published in the fall by Johns Hopkins. His previous books include: Do We Still Need Doctors?, The Lazarus Case: Life and Death Issues in Neonatal Intensive Care, and The Last Physician: Walker Percy and the Moral Life of Medicine.

The Biomedical Ethics Grand Rounds are presented on the first Tuesday of each month from 8 — 9 am in the Clark Center Auditorium. Please contact the Center for Biomedical Ethics at 650-723-5760 for further information or visit our website at http://scbe.stanford.edu.