Medicine’s Duty to Preserve Life

The book places the Memorial events within a longer debate about medicine’s promise to heal, the limits of treatment, and the danger of becoming an agent of death.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Hippocratic Boundary

The Hippocratic Boundary A Separation of Roles The Hippocratic tradition rejected giving a lethal drug even at a patient’s request. Later accounts described this as a defining separation between curing and killing. Trust in the Profession The boundary is not simple in practice, but it represents a promise that doctors will not decide that a patient’s life should end for someone else’s convenience or social purpose.

New Technology, New Dilemmas

New Technology, New Dilemmas Life Support Expands Intensive care machines made it possible to sustain patients who previously would have died. The capacity to prolong life created questions about when treatment should be started or stopped. Cost and Judgment As care became more expensive, policy-makers questioned whether technology was being used wisely. Horace Baltz resisted turning cost or prognosis into a judgment about whose life deserved protection.

Withdrawing Versus Killing

Withdrawing Versus Killing Treatment Refusal Recognized Courts recognized a right to refuse life-sustaining treatment, distinguishing withdrawal of unwanted care from active euthanasia. This distinction helped shape modern end-of-life practice. A Difficult Line The difference depends on the legitimacy of the refusal and the clinician’s intention. Disaster conditions complicated the line but did not automatically erase it.

Disaster as a Moral Exception

Disaster as a Moral Exception Ordinary Rules Under Strain Some Memorial staff believed that standard medical norms no longer applied because the hospital was isolated and resources were failing. Others argued that the patients still deserved ordinary protection. The Exception’s Danger Calling the situation exceptional may explain pressure, but it can also expand permission to decide for others. The book asks whether compassion can become a rationale for unconsented killing.

A Rule for Future Crises

A Rule for Future Crises Guidance Against Hastening Death The Institute of Medicine concluded that neither law nor ethics supports intentionally hastening death in a crisis. It urged emergency planning that protects patients while recognizing scarcity. The Duty Remains The deeper challenge is not to invent an exception to every moral rule, but to prepare well enough that clinicians are less often forced into catastrophic choices.

Ancient tradition and modern medicine

1960s–1980s

1975–1997

September 1, 2005

After 2007