By Gregory K Pike. Multifetal Pregnancy Reduction (MFPR) was initially a response to the high incidence of multiples in Assisted Reproductive Technology. It has even been called “an integral fail-safe of infertility practice”. Its goal was, and mostly still is, to improve outcomes by terminating some fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, on the grounds that […]
Category: Autonomy
Respect for autonomy in medical ethics: it’s more complicated than you think
By Xavier Symons and Susan Pennings. Respect for patient autonomy is perhaps the pre-eminent principle in contemporary bioethics. What else, after all, is more important than respecting the considered preferences of patients and research participants in medicine? Tom Beauchamp once wrote that “[the] moral value of respect for autonomy precedes and is not the product […]