RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Responsibility in healthcare across time and agents
JF Journal of Medical Ethics
JO J Med Ethics
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 636
OP 644
DO 10.1136/medethics-2019-105382
VO 45
IS 10
A1 Rebecca C H Brown
A1 Julian Savulescu
YR 2019
UL http://jme.bmj.com/content/45/10/636.abstract
AB It is unclear whether someone’s responsibility for developing a disease or maintaining his or her health should affect what healthcare he or she receives. While this dispute continues, we suggest that, if responsibility is to play a role in healthcare, the concept must be rethought in order to reflect the sense in which many health-related behaviours occur repeatedly over time and are the product of more than one agent. Most philosophical accounts of responsibility are synchronic and individualistic; we indicate here what paying more attention to the diachronic and dyadic aspects of responsibility might involve and what implications this could have for assessments of responsibility for health-related behaviour.