Abstract
Technologies for feeding permanently incapacitated patients enterally or parenterally through various forms of artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) have generated moral questions and controversies. Particularly for patients in a persistent vegetative state or in advanced Alzheimer disease but also for terminally ill newborns, there are questions about whether ANH should be withheld or withdrawn. Is ANH extraordinary or even futile care? Do its burdens outweigh its benefits? For patients provided with terminal sedation at the end of life, there are questions about the accompaniment of sedation with withdrawal of ANH. Is that removal a form of euthanasia? Or is it a justified part of the palliative care being provided at the end of life. Two further kinds of cases raise different sets of issues. First, is the forced feeding, by means of ANH, of hunger-striking prisoners, as, for example, the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, morally permissible, or is it a violation of bodily integrity and perhaps a form of torture? And second, is the failure to provide more adequate nutrition and hydration, including ANH, for Ebola patients in the developing world a matter of global injustice? This entry looks at each of these issues in turn.
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Further Readings
Caplan, A. L., McCartney, J. J., & Sisti, D. A. (Eds.). (2006). The case of Terri Schiavo: Ethics at the end of life. Amherst: Prometheus Books.
Keown, J. (Ed.). (1997). Euthanasia examined: Ethical, clinical, and legal perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Tollefsen, C. (2016). Artificial Nutrition and Hydration. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_28
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