Op-Ed: Is there ‘No Obligation to Act’?

December 4, 2006

A recent report from the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Critical care decisions in fetal and neonatal medicine: ethical issues, concludes that “there are some circumstances in which imposing or continuing treatments to sustain a newborn baby’s life results in a level of irremediable suffering such that there is no ethical obligation to act in order to preserve that life.” Accordingly, the Council opines that physicians ethically may withhold or withdraw treatment from such infants. Indeed, while the Council claims not to accept active euthanasia as ethical, it invokes the principle of double effect to justify the use of “potentially life-shortening but pain-relieving treatments.” (TCS Daily)