response to peer 9

Every day doctors have to deal with complicated circumstances where their actions can make a remarkable difference in the life of human beings. This video begins explaining us how medical science has made remarkable advances in the last past years and how today doctors cure people who would have died in the past. This video shows a specific medical case in which the persons involved face a moral dilemma and suggests how different theories of Ethics could help into the solution of such delicate problem.

The case presents a Holland couple that has had twin boys after only 26 weeks of pregnancy. This family was blessed with two boys, but one of the boys was born with fragile health problems. This little child’s life started with a hard fight against death. Doctors explained to the family the delicate situation of their child that is not able to breathe normally because he had not fully developed lungs at birth time. A doctor had to connect him to a respiratory machine because he has suffered two brain hemorrhages in both brain hemispheres and was in that moment when the moral dilemma appears.

The moral dilemma begins when the parents and the team of doctors involved in the case had to make the decision to fight for the twins’ life or just let him go. They need to consider all the aspects related to present and future life of this human being that has just entered this world. Is this boy that cannot communicate with us suffering? Will it be worthy to fight? How severely handicapped will the boy be? Will he be able to live an independent life or will he always have to depend on others? All these questions and others are analyzed since three ethical perspectives: Kant’s theory, utilitarianism and the Aristotle’s virtue ethics.

The three theories have their pros and cons, but I decided to defend the position that the family and doctors took from the point of view of Virtue Ethics, in which the persons have to think about their decisions based on their growth as human beings. The persons involve in the case need to find in themselves a balance between prudence, wisdom and courage to defend their ideas and actions. This family and doctors do not have a way to know what it is going to happen, but they need to feel good about the decision they are making and feel committed to assume their responsibilities to this human being who is not in position to decide for himself. Aristoteles with his virtue ethics is not telling anyone what to do, he does not say if doctors are right or wrong, he just says that if they are virtuous they need to be alert on this situation; they need to monitor what it is going on and they need to follow their instincts and capacities and be able to find the most reasonable treatment for this patient they have in front of them.