Abstract
Unfortunately, one of the most frequent and frustrating tasks of the medical ethicist in a clinical setting is that of having to sort out tangled webs of claims to an almost unbelievable variety of rights. In most situations those involved in these perplexing clinical dilemmas fail to examine the nature or basis of these rights claims. Rights, as a number of authors have pointed out, function as what might best be called trump cards in an ethical debate or dialogue [6]. Debates about obligations, responsibilities, rules, principles and values can be conducted almost indefinitely. By an appeal to a right, the participant in an ethical debate can essentially ‘call’ the other participants in the dialogue to play their hands. Rights claims have a demand quality ([5], p. 137). Others involved in the decision are put on the defensive.
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© 1981 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Bartholome, W.G. (1981). The Child-Patient: Do Parents have the ‘Right to Decide’?. In: Spicker, S.F., Healey, J.M., Engelhardt, H.T. (eds) The Law-Medicine Relation: A Philosophical Exploration. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8407-3_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8407-3_19
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