The Clash of Perspectives

Abstract

The two perspectives in question are the individual and the population perspectives. In this chapter, I want to argue that a number of problems in medical ethics can be boiled down to an irreconcilable clash between these two perspectives, a clash that is often ‘resolved’ by giving priority to the impersonal population one. I will argue that this is an arbitrary resolution, one that fails to make sense of the uniqueness of the individual and the way this individual experiences — that is, from his personal perspective — the dilemmas typical in the medical world. Let me start by taking three different examples from dilemmas associated with pregnancy and birth, from three prominent mainstream authors. My discussion will then follow the third example.