Hope and deception

Bioethics

Volumn 13, Issue 3-4, 1999, Pages 343-357

  Ruddick, W ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONFERENCE PAPER; DEATH; DENIAL; ETHICS; EXPECTATION; HUMAN; MORALITY; PHYSICIAN; RECUMBENCY; SUICIDE ATTEMPT;

EID: 0032868249     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8519.00162     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (11)

1. Life and Times of Ambroise Paré [1510?-1590]. New York: P.B. Hoeber, 1921.
2. Here, as elsewhere, the East/West contract is overdrawn and the 'twin are meeting' after all. Reportedly, Japanese physicians are increasingly pressed for truthful diagnoses and prognoses, at least by younger patients (Blackhall et al., JAMA 1995; 24:820-25), while North American physicians are increasingly pressed by immigrants to conceal dire facts, at least from older family members.
3. For example, Edmund Pellegrino and David Thomasma, The Virtues in Medical Practice. New York: Oxford UP 1998.
4. Sandra Blakeslee, 'Enthusiasm of Doctor Can Give Pill Extra Kick', Science Times, New York Times, October 13, 1998, p. 4.
5. 'Social Deceptions', in Perspectives on Self-Deception, edited by B.P. McLaughlin and A.O. Rorty. University of California Press, 1988. Cf. fn. 11 below.
6. 'Yet there was one thing that comforted her - the fact that they had brought her to this clinic: she had an exaggerated notion of its excellence. 'At the Boucicaut they would have operated on me yesterday! It appears that this is the best clinic in Paris.' Simone de Beauvoir, writing of her mother after a stroke and broken leg. A Very Easy Death (New York: Pantheon 1985), p. 17.
7. Shlomo Breznitz makes a similar contrast in 'Denial Versus Hope: Concluding Remarks', Handbook of Stress, 2nd edition, edited by Shlomo Breznitz and Leo Goldberger. New York: Free Press 1993, pp. 297-302.
8. Some philosophers have tried to provide a probability-analysis of hopes, but with limited success. See J.P. Day, 'The Anatomy of Hope and Fear', Mind LXXIX (1970). He allows hope to range from a subjective probability lower limit of 0.001 to an upper limit less than 1.0. I think these are both too high. Any value greater than 0 could express a possibility-hope, but any value very close to 1 will not reflect the uncertainty (or fear, according to Spinoza) that is presupposed by hope. Perhaps the upper limit should be dropped to 0.945 to reflect the use of 0.5 confidence levels in statistical studies in medicine.
9. Failure in the last 100 cases is the criterion for medically futility treatments proposed by Lawrence J. Schneiderman and Nancy S. Jecker in Wrong Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
10. Briefly sketched in an IAB IV panel on brain death, this 'bio-social' concept of death is developed in an essay, 'Death and Discretion' posted in draft on the web at http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/ruddick.
11. Apart from Aquinas and Spinoza, the most helpful writing I have found is that of James Muyskens, The Sufficiency of Hope: The Conceptual Foundations of Religion. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press Philosophical Monographs, 1979.) Although a work in philosophy of religion, the first three chapters analyze hopes and beliefs, whatever their objects. Discussions with Jeffrey Blustein, Bengt Brülde, Garsten Hansen, and Frances Kamm have been very helpful, as well.