Kantian Deontology Vs Medicine

Kantian Deontology Vs. Medicine Dignity is an innate feature of human beings: they are born with it. Maintaining it over the course of life gives it an acquired status: preserving it is not an easy task. Human Rights are one form of laws that try to conserve human dignity and many countries abide by them. Nonetheless, attempts to preserve this dignity date back to centuries before the United Nations decided to publish its chart on Human Rights. During the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant described human dignity as the only feature that has an intrinsic, unchangeable value (Kant & Gregor, 1998). While some of Kant’s veterans and cotemporaries preferred other entities as having an ultimate value, such as happiness, Kant advanced his theory
We can assume for the sake of that logic that the novice is not treating the patient as mere means, however, that novice’s supervisor is treating that same patient as a mere means to teach his student. The patient would be the maid used as a table, the supervising doctor is the housewife reaching for the cookie jar to give to the novice, a visitor. By doing so, the patient’s intrinsic value is wiped out of the equation: his body is used to achieve a need.
This same line of logic can be modified to include a wider scope. If practicing on patients allows a better medical practice in the future, the patient will be treated as a means temporarily, but as an end on the long run. Additionally, the patient is not used as mere means (Le Morvan & Stock, 2005). Two problems arise when we try to consider this as a rational explanation to Kantian ethics in the stated medical field. Let us consider the first problem: unrealistic
Kantian ethics abstract our legislative decisions from our surroundings. This is a limitation. Indeed people are all equal in their value in Kant’s kingdom of ends; nonetheless, they are not equal in their circumstances in the real tangible world. Different people have different incomes and thus we can spot at least one difference in people’s conditions that Kant ignores. Consequently, not all patients are able to visit non-teaching hospitals, be it for financial or geographical reasons or even other reasons. Thus, the patients do not always have the choice to decide where to get their treatments from (Le Morvan & Stock, 2005), and are thus forced to seek help in nearby affordable hospitals. They did not consent to the treatment they are getting: they are forced to use