The Limited Medical Paternalism And It's Justification

Medical paternalism comes from the Hippocratic tradition of ancient Greece. The way by which doctors treat patients in traditional medical process likes the way by which parents treat their children. For the sake of interests of the patient, doctors make all kinds of medical decisions instead of patients and ignore patients wishes. The thought of medical paternalism has altruism and compulsory. It embodies the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence. Paternalistic medical care has been dominant for several thousand years in the traditional medical care. With the development of modern human rights campaign and the liberalism, patient's right campaign is raising vigorously. The traditional medical paternalism is fiercely critized. The patient's autonomy gets unprecedentedly improved. What the patient's autonomy reflects is the principle of respect of autonomy. The principle of respect of autonomy requires that the patient's independent and voluntary choice in the medical process should be considered primarily. And it attaches great importance to the informed consent. With the establishment of patient's autonomy in the medical process, the paternalistic treatment declined gradually.In recent years, the medical disputes appeared continuously in the medical process, we have to reflect the correctness of stressing the principle of respect of autonomy in a one-side way. The principle of autonomy also has own limitation that absolute autonomy can not be realized in the medical process at all. And sometimes even if we emphasize the principle of respect of autonomy, the interests of the patient are still harmed. Some scholars begin to recourse to the rationality of medical paternalism in order to beyond the limitation of the principle of respect of autonomy. But their projects still can't resolve the contradictions between the principle of respect of autonomy and medical paternalism. This paper tries to put forward an idea of limited medical paternalism which can be morally justified. This limited medical paternalism affirms that the interests of patients is more important than the rights of patients, the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence have precedence over the principle of respect of autonomy in some specific medical situations. The limited medical paternalism balances the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence and the principle of respect of autonomy. It abandons the defects of the traditional medical paternalism.