Humane Treatment and the Treatment of Humans

Abstract

When should we treat patients and under what circumstances should we refuse them treatment? In the last 10 years there has been a tendency to think of these issues as ethical problems. It is not that physicians failed to think in value terms or failed to make conscientious decisions about treatment before then. Such problems stare nurses and physicians in the face daily, and, on the whole, decisions have always been made on the basis of habit or intuition in a way that was serious and humane. But lately the process of decision making has become more explicit. Critical attention . . .