Clinical Ethics in the Face of the Announced End of the World

Authors

  • Guillaume Durand Département de philosophie, Université de Nantes; Centre Atlantique de Philosophie (CAPHI, EA 7463); Consultations d’Éthique Clinique, Clinique Jules Verne, Centre Hospitalier de Saint-Nazaire/Clinique Mutualiste de l’Estuaire, Nantes, France https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6625-6223

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7202/1073785ar

Keywords:

clinical ethics, end of the world, utilitarianism, deontology, procreation, environmental ethics

Language(s):

French

Abstract

The Earth is increasingly hostile towards many living species and uninhabitable in some parts of the world. What is foretold in the coming decades is not the end of the world, but the end of the world as we know it. All over the world, many individuals (scientists, intellectuals, citizens) today believe in the inevitability of a collapse of our civilization and their existence is profoundly disrupted: can they still plan to start a family? Should they continue their studies, or should they start preparing for survival today? Does existence still have any meaning? In clinical ethics consultations, we are confronted with requests for definitive contraception for environmental reasons that put the medical profession and the very foundations of clinical ethics in difficulty. What answers are legitimate?

Open issue, (c) Han Han Li

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Published

2020-11-16

How to Cite

[1]
Durand G. Clinical Ethics in the Face of the Announced End of the World. Can. J. Bioeth 2020;3:110-4. https://doi.org/10.7202/1073785ar.

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 3 (2020): Open Issue

Section

Critical commentaries

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Guillaume Durand

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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