Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care Utrecht, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
J Med Ethics. 2019 Feb;45(2):92-94. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2018-104951. Epub 2018 Jun 15.
The authors of the paper 'Advance euthanasia directives: a controversial case and its ethical implications' articulate concerns and reasons with regard to the conduct of euthanasia in persons with dementia based on advance directives. While we agree on the conclusion that there needs to be more attention for such directives in the preparation phase, we disagree with the reasons provided by the authors to support their conclusions. We will outline two concerns with their reasoning by drawing on empirical research and by providing reasons that contradict their assumptions about competence of people with dementia and the (un)importance of happiness in reasoning about advance directives of people with dementia. We will draw attention to the important normative questions that have been overstepped in their paper, and we will outline why further research is required.
本文作者就基于预先指示进行痴呆患者的安乐死问题表达了他们的关注和理由。虽然我们同意这样的结论，即在准备阶段需要更多地关注这些指示，但我们不同意作者提供的理由来支持他们的结论。我们将通过援引实证研究并提供与他们关于痴呆患者能力和（不）重要性的假设相矛盾的理由，来概述他们推理中的两个关注点，以此来反驳他们的推理。我们将提请注意他们的论文中忽略的重要规范性问题，并概述为什么需要进一步研究。
