This one is easy. A son, racked with guilt because he missed his dying father’s last moments in a hospice because he was drunk, asked his father’s physician if Dad had suffered. The doctor answered that he had died in his sleep, peacefully. In reality, though the doctor wasn’t present, there was some indication that the father had been “in distress” before he shuffled off these mortal coils, according to some in the shift on duty.
“Did I betray a position of trust by lying to him?,” the doctor asks The Ethicist, aka. Kwame Anthony Appiah. “What, if anything, makes a lie morally acceptable?”
No, the doctor didn’t betray a position of trust because the dead father was the patient, not his son. The MD had no professional duty to the son in this situation, any more than it would have been unethical for him to bluff the son into folding a winning hand in a poker game. What makes a lie morally acceptable, that is, ethical, is when it accomplishes more good than the truth would, particularly when the truth would achieve no good at all except in an ethical system where the truth is always the best course. Which is to say, Fantasy Land.
Let’s consider the various options open to the doctor.
One of the comments on that piece was a person saying holding her cat while it was euthanized was one of the most horrifying things she ever experienced so now she is never in the room when her pets breathe their last.
She’s a horrible person and shouldn’t be allowed to ever have another pet.
As far as the question/answer, I’m leaning towards being in favor of lying to the son because it appears the son didn’t make up a lie for the doctor about why he didn’t answer his phone.
I wouldn’t apply the word “horrible” to a person who’s not actively making the world a worse place for personal gain, but I would describe that person as a weak-willed coward. I’m not currently brave enough to take responsibility for the health and happiness of a pet, but if I did have a pet that had to be euthanized I’d consider it the bare minimum obligation to be a presence of comfort and familiarity in its last moments of awareness.
It does raise the question of how empathetic and attentive she really is to her pets, and for that matter to the people in her life.
Oh, she is right that it is horrifying. I have had to do it twice. It is awful because you are at the place you have always taken the cat when sick to make the cat better. If the cat has any understanding of the situation at all, it thinks you are going to make it better with the shot. The dying cat is purring in your arms while the shot is given and the cat just stops. It stops purring, stops breathing, and the life goes out of the eyes in an instant before the shot is even done.
If you can’t handle that, however, you are not really ready for adult responsibility. If you can’t handle that, you really shouldn’t vote.
I’ve had to go through this four times. You do it out of care and love for the animal. It’s the least one can do.
Yes, you do it for the animal. I think she’s horrible because she’s more concerned about her discomfort than about her pets’ comfort. I would not want to risk my pets feeling abandoned by me in their last moments just so that I didn’t have to witness it.
This lie did likely prevent serious harm. Given the state the son is in, and the fact that he is already struggling with guilt over his alcoholism and it causing him to miss his father’s last moments, this lie likely prevented a spiral. It’s a good lie, like telling someone with dementia that their deceased spouse/aunt/sibling is ‘out shopping’ or ‘on a trip’ over and over. I don’t find ripping people’s hearts out in the name of truth virtuous in the least. It comes across as narcissistic fake virtue. The doctor needs another think about the situation, with a therapist or trusted colleague instead of a newspaper columnist.