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Responding to a Non-Imminently Dying Patient’s Request for Pacemaker Deactivation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2024

Kelsey Gipe*
Affiliation:
Program in Medicine and Human Values, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA Department of Thanatology, Marian University Wisconsin, Fond du Lac, WI, USA

Extract

Based on Nathan Goldstein’s case report, “But I have a pacer…there is no point in engaging in hypothetical scenarios”: A Non-imminently Dying Patient’s Request for Pacemaker Deactivation, it is reasonable to conclude that it was, all-things-considered, ethically appropriate to grant the patient’s request to deactivate her pacemaker. Philosophically, and as a clinical bioethicist, I support the team’s decision to honor the patient’s request for pacemaker deactivation. However, it is worth exploring a bit further whether the distress on the part of the outside hospital’s ethics committee and providers—who declined to honor the patient’s request for pacemaker deactivation—may actually track something of moral significance. Might their discomfort around deactivation be “truth-tracking” in moral terms?

Type
Commentary
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. See Gipe, K. Heartbeats, burdens, and biofixtures. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 2021;30(2):285–96CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

2. See Gipe K. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2024; forthcoming.