Compassion, consensus, and conflict: should caregivers' needs influence the ethical dialectic?

There are three important principles to be derived from this case. First, it is essential not to confound the technical problem of assessing pain and suffering with the ethical issue of judgments about pain and suffering. Second, in most cases, the apparent limitations of traditional ethical theory in critical care decisions are precisely that: apparent limitations only. The alternatives, especially intuitionism, are far more troublesome. Finally, the claim of health-care workers to be professionals places legitimate constraints on the extent to which they may be permitted to have their needs and wants influence the ethical dialectic. The achievement and maintenance of "comfortable, compatible relationships" cannot be legitimately construed as a major objective of biomedical ethics--although one would hope it will become a cherished, if serendipitous, byproduct. In short, paraphrasing (and reversing) Archibald MacLeish on poetry: Ethics should not be/but mean.