Professional Environments and Ethical Decision-Making
Professional environments require individuals to practice ethical decision-making but the foundations upon which to base these decisions vary depending on the ethical theory used to analyze a particular situation. An analysis of ethical dilemma 4, namely the sick patients’ scenario, highlights that the use of deontological and utilitarian ethics would result in different outcomes altogether for the patients. The key issue for this scenario was that taking an active decision to end an organ donor’s life has the potential to help save the lives of five other patients. However, this also requires the justification of such a decision with the full awareness of its implications for the future of all of the patients involved. Therefore, the awareness that people’s lives are at stake makes it essential to understand the outcomes that would ensue with the application of various ethical principles.
Mandal, Ponnanbath, and Parija's View on Deontological Ethics
Mandal, Ponnanbath, and Parija (5) consider deontological ethics as derivative of Immanuel Kant’s work on the foundations for human reason, whereby this theory posits that the moral code of a person determines whether an action is right or wrong. In this case, the use of deontology would mean that the right thing to do would be to allow nature to take its course even if it means the death of all six patients. The predicate for this is the fact that sacrificing the sixth patient would amount to the voluntary termination of a life regardless of the proposed potential for saving the lives of five other patients. This consideration counts as a shortcoming for deontological theory since it introduces a complexity to the handling of ethical dilemmas in which the actor’s capacity for objectivity faces situational limitations.
Utilitarian Ethics and The Pursuit of Maximum Pleasure
For utilitarian ethics, aggregate pleasure becomes a determinant of the actor’s actions, whereby Jeremy Bentham hypothesized that a decision can count as ethical if it leads to the most positive outcome for all the participants (Mandal, Ponnanbath, and Parija 5). For this particular ethical dilemma, the application of utilitarian ethics would provide grounds for justifying the early termination of the sixth patent’s life since it is a requirement for achieving maximum positive results for all those involved. One could also use the sixth patient’s terminal diagnosis to justify this decision since his death is inevitable while the deaths of the five other patients are salvageable. In fact, using utilitarian ethics in this scenario would call for such an outcome when considering that the sixth patient also has a precedent to save the lives of others through his registration as an organ donor.
Different Results for the Patients
Deontological and utilitarian ethics as applied to the fourth ethical dilemma show that their use would have different results for the patients. While deontological ethics would require that the sanctity of the sixth patient’s life must feature as a determinant in the doctor’s decisions, utilitarian ethics considers the utility of the other patients’ lives as more important. While the utilitarian theory does allow sacrificing the sixth patient, it would also double back on this decision if the patient’s disease had a cure. On the other hand, the deontological theory would follow the guidance of morality in both cases and thereby respect the sanctity of the sixth patient’s life regardless of his condition. As a result, deontology stands out as the appropriate ethical principle to use as guidance for decisions in the medical field since it has a justice-oriented foundation that utilitarian ethics do not.
Works Cited
Mandal, Jharna, Dinoop Korol Ponnambath, and Subhash Chandra Parija. "Utilitarian and Deontological Ethics in Medicine." Tropical Parasitology 6.1 (2016): 5.
