A Life Worth Sustaining? Bestowed Worth and Pediatric Care

Dados Bibliográficos

ID17536177
AutoresDaniel T Kim (0000-0003-4692-0374), Xiang Yu (0000-0001-6541-1562)
Ano2026
Volume56
Fascículo2
Páginas30-42
Data de publicação2026-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Hastings Center Report (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0093-0334 • E-ISSN: 1552-146X
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/hast.70015
PMID41840781
OpenAlexW7138236946
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas23

When parents request life-sustaining treatments for children who suffer from profound neurocognitive disabilities or are at the end of life, the typical ethics advice for clinicians is to accommodate the request. It can be unclear what interests such children have, and being unable to assess those interests, a clinician will tend to honor parents' requests to continue treatments if the associated pain can be palliated. But how is the clinician not participating in using a profoundly vulnerable child merely to satisfy parental interests? In what sense can their actions be experienced as worthwhile? These circumstances can be morally distressing for clinicians, and recent efforts to justify the practice according to a relational potential standard seem problematic. We therefore propose an alternative meaningfulness standard, which builds on a notion of bestowed worth to explain how a clinician's duty to treat in these cases can be meaningful, and why it need not entail using the child as a mere means

Argument (complex analysis) · Best interests · Distressing · Duty · Honor · Neurocognitive · Standard of care · Childhood Cancer Survivors' Quality of Life · Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare · Ethics in medical practice