This article traces the way autonomy has become a recognised value in health care in France. In a country that based its social fundamentals on the very idea of solidarity for many years, autonomy has long been considered a foreign 'Anglo-American principle'. Taking the example of the end-of-life debate, the article shows, however, how the use of the French term 'accompagnement' allowed autonom...

The principle of patient autonomy is a cornerstone of bioethics. According to this concept, patients should be given the power to make decisions related to their treatment. It is an important component of modern medical ethics, which has received much interest in current literature. However, the rate of participation of patients and their willingness to participate are variable according to the...

Prenatal genetic testing allows potential parents to screen for and diagnose an everincreasing number of conditions. However, because there is no treatment for the majority of currently detectable conditions, the information opens the door to selective termination, which some in the disability community consider morally problematic. Genetic counselors, and the other genetics professionals who o...

The right not to know is often defended on the basis of the principle of respect for personal autonomy. If I choose not to acquire personal information that impacts on my future prospects, such a choice should be respected, because I should be able to decide whether to access information about myself and how to use it. But, according to the incoherence objection to the right not to know in the ...

The design principle of restricting local autonomy only where necessary for global robustness has led to a scalable Internet. Unfortunately, this scalability and capacity for distributed control has not been achieved in the mechanisms for specifying and enforcing security policies. The STRONGMAN system described in this paper demonstrates three new approaches to providing efficient local policy...

Libertarianism enshrines individual autonomy as its central political principle, but it has been criticized for applying this principle selectively. Reproductive decisions can stress the concept of by placing into conflict claimed rights each biological parent to choose. Two studies (N1 = 296; N2 580) show that among U.S. participants, libertarianism is associated with opposition women's reprod...

T he human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic, by its devastating nature as an incurable, contagious disease primarily affecting young, previously healthy patients, presents care-givers with many ethical dilemmas. While the epidemic and the dilemmas it creates are novel, the ethical principles at our disposal are well established through our experience with other diseases. In this article we...

Background and Aim: Health policies and public health practices have always been confronting with dilemmas about proper extent to achieve its goal and conflicts with individual freedoms in its activities. This study aimed to explore the prominence of ethical principles and moral norms in the areas of clinical and public health practice. Methods: In this study, literature was purposefully search...

While in most countries suicide is no longer a crime, it is also acknowledged that the state has an interest in the preservation of human life, the prevention of suicide, and the protection of vulnerable persons from harming themselves. In a civil, secular and democratic society, however, the public law principle of state protective powers has to be balanced against the private law principle of...