Kant and therapeutic privilege.
Given Kant's exceptionless moral prohibition on lying, one might suspect that he is committed to a similar prohibition on withholding diagnostic and prognostic information from patients. I confirm this suspicion by adapting arguments against therapeutic privilege from his arguments against lying. However, I show that all these arguments are importantly flawed and submit that they should be rejected. A more compelling Kantian take on informed consent and therapeutic privilege is achievable, I argue, by focusing on Kant's duty of beneficence, which requires us to aim at furthering others' ends. But I show that there are some cases in which furthering a patient's ends requires withholding material medical information from her. Although I concede that these cases are probably quite rare, I conclude that the best Kantian thinking agrees with that of therapeutic privilege's advocates.
Brown
Chris
C
National University of Singapore, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 3 Arts Link, Singapore. cabrown@u.arizona.edu
D008192:Deception; D030881:Disclosure; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D009014:Morals; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D035502:Trust