Abstract

FLORENCIA BELLI, Laura. THE DEBATE ON THE VALIDITY OF ADVANCE DIRECTIVES FOR HEALTH. pers.bioét. [online]. 2014, vol.18, n.2, pp.213-225. ISSN 2027-5382.  https://doi.org/10.5294/PEBI.2014.18.2.10.

Advance directives (also called "living wills") are documents signed by a competent individual providing directives as to the permission to apply or to reject medical treatments in the event that the individual who wrote it may not be in a position to declare his or her will. Despite the good reception from the global bioethics community, their validity has been seriously questioned. In this paper, I intend to analyze in depth the faults mentioned by its detractors and I will try to offer an alternative that is superior to the classic version of these documents and manage to escape the criticism which, for decades, they have been subject to.

Keywords : Advance directives; personal autonomy; bioethics.

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