Scully Jackie Leach, Porz Rouven, Rehmann-Sutter Christoph
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, 5th floor Claremont Bridge, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.
Bioethics. 2007 May;21(4):208-17. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00546.x.
The part played by time in ethics is often taken for granted, yet time is essential to moral decision making. This paper looks at time in ethical decisions about having a genetic test. We use a patient-centred approach, combining empirical research methods with normative ethical analysis to investigate the patients' experience of time in (i) prenatal testing of a foetus for a genetic condition, (ii) predictive or diagnostic testing for breast and colon cancer, or (iii) testing for Huntington's disease (HD). We found that participants often manipulated their experience of time, either using a stepwise process of microdecisions to extend it or, under the time pressure of pregnancy, changing their temporal 'depth of field'. We discuss the implications of these strategies for normative concepts of moral agency, and for clinical ethics.
时间在伦理学中所起的作用常常被视为理所当然，但时间对于道德决策至关重要。本文探讨了在关于进行基因检测的伦理决策中的时间问题。我们采用以患者为中心的方法，将实证研究方法与规范性伦理分析相结合，以调查患者在以下三种情况下对时间的体验：（i）对胎儿进行遗传性疾病的产前检测；（ii）针对乳腺癌和结肠癌的预测性或诊断性检测；（iii）亨廷顿舞蹈症（HD）检测。我们发现，参与者常常操控他们对时间的体验，要么通过逐步做出微观决策的过程来延长时间，要么在怀孕带来的时间压力下，改变他们的时间“景深”。我们讨论了这些策略对于道德行为主体的规范性概念以及临床伦理学的意义。
