Ethical Issues in the Care of Children with Craniofacial Conditions

Abstract

Abstract Ethical issues that arise in the treatment of children with craniofacial anomalies often require health professionals, patients, and families to make difficult decisions. In this chapter, we examine the nature of ethical dilemmas and the principles that may guide ethical decision-making. A number of selected issues that affect craniofacial care are presented, but rather than providing answers to ethical dilemmas, we pose questions that readers can use to examine their own values and principles. Ethical decisions involve questions of meaning and call for a distinction between what is “right” and what is “wrong.” In the conduct of clinical care, judgments about fairness, human duty, and personal morals are ethical decisions. These are not technical questions that are meant for experts in ethics; rather, health professionals regularly make ethical decisions in clinical practice (Beauchamp and Childress, 1994; Jonsen et al., 1992). Biomedical ethics has received considerable attention because clinical practice involves a professional who is called upon to decide or recommend “what is right” for a patient. Decisions that impact the lives of others, particularly in the context of healthcare, have stimulated substantial public and professional controversy. Biomedical ethical issues that generate public and media attention highlight general social and moral issues. In some regards, ethical issues in craniofacial care are particular cases of social and moral decisions that occur in the conduct of other human matters. For example, issues that relate to the access to costly dental services are merely a subset of the issues that relate to how a society manages access to scarce resources.