Ethical Consideration about Family Members' Participation in Cancer Treatment Decision-making / 中国医学伦理学

ABSTRACT

The defense for paternalism is based on that family members' decisions are usually beneficial for patients' best interests.However,this premise remains to be demonstrated.The moral theory of maintaining family members' interests challenged the ethical principle of respecting patients' autonomy,which believed that treatment decisions should be discussed by the whole family members.However,the principle of autonomy does not always dissever the relationship between individual and family members.It resorted East Asia family autonomy of Chinese traditional culture and emphasized on the value of objective goodness and family dependence.However,patients often do not play a proper role in families' decision-making.Besides,the Confucian bioethics also needs to provide more sufficient argumentation to deal with the relationship between subjective goodness and objective goodness.The unconditional acquiescence of family members' domination in decision-making is worthy reflecting in the current medical environment.