A 4 year old girl suffers from severe renal failure. She fails to thrive on dialysis, she needs a kidney transplantation soon or she will not survive. If the kidney can be transplant of a close relative that matches in tissue type the success rate of transplantation is 90%. If the tissue match is less close, even from a close relative the success rate is way less, like the same odds as for a poorly matched cadaver kidney. The probability of getting a good match from a cadaver is also less than from a close relative. The patient has her parents and 2 older siblings who undergo tissue typing to check if they are a tissue match. The results showed that the father is an excellent match, and all the other family members are a poor …show more content…
Kantianism is a theory of the moral law of Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant tried a moral system based solely on the reason for the hope that a moral philosophy that is objectively true and is universal. Kant stated the importance to base our actions on a reason why this is the only way to ensure that our morality is objective and is selfish in no way. Kantianism focused on: “the moral status of an action is not determined by its consequences. We are not morally obligated to seek the best overall outcome by our actions, but rather to perform those actions that accord with our moral duty—the fundamental demand that we should treat others, and ourselves, in a manner that is consistent with human dignity and worth” (Practical Guide, p. 72). This theory differs from act utilitarianism since it does not look out the consequences or outcomes, but focused on the action …show more content…
So following Kantianism should the physician tell the truth, regardless of the consequences. Lying is wrong because the person who lies follows a maxim that they could not possibly want to be universal since it would contradict their own purpose. Someone lies for the purpose of deceiving, but in a world where everyone adopted the maxim to lie, no one could deceived. In other words, you should act in a way that it would be both possible and good if everybody did. Also in one of the formulations of the categorical imperative in Kantianism. The formulation universal law states that a categorical imperative must be applied in principle to every human being in the same conditions, and not only the individual assessed. In this case, it would be fair to say that the categorical imperative can be to ‘never lie’, but not ‘you can lie, because the father does want others to know the results’. Applied to the case the physician should tell the patient, her mom and two siblings that the father is a good tissue