The Family in Medical Decisionmaking

Should the authority to make treatment decisions be extended to the patient's family? Neither arguments from fairness nor communitarian justify such an infringement on patient autonomy. . . . The practical problem is how to design procedures and structures of decisionmaking achieve an acceptable balance between rights and responsibilities, the important values of a patient-centered ethos and the legitimate of other family members. . . . Individual rights have an important place in because the existence of community does not eradicate serious about ends, about the relationship between particular choices and ends.