Open AccessRethinking the withholding/withdrawing distinction: the cultural construction of “life-support” and the framing of end-of-life decisions
Author(s) -
Yechiel Michael Barilan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
multidisciplinary respiratory medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.72
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 2049-6958
pISSN - 1828-695X
DOI - 10.4081/mrm.2015.284
Subject(s) - framing (construction) , naturalism , psychological intervention , life support , sociology , psychology , law , environmental ethics , epistemology , social psychology , political science , philosophy , engineering , structural engineering , psychiatry
This paper is a theoretical and empirically informed examination of the naturalist distinction between withholding and withdrawing life-support. Drawing on the history of mechanical ventilation and on a recent Israeli law containing a novel approach to disconnecting life-support at the end of life, it is argued that the design of machines predicates the division line between “active” and “passive” interventions, and that the distinction itself might be morally self-defeating. Informed by insights from moral psychology, behavioral economics and philosophies of technology, the paper warns against the placement of this old distinction at the heart of the moral and legal regulation of life-support at the end of life.