Dr Jan Crosthwaite This is Me

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1. 1. www.nzherald.co.nz

   www.nzherald.co.nz/section/sto - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/4/2007   Last Visited: 4/5/2007

   An associate professor of philosophy at the University of Auckland, Dr Jan Crosthwaite, said there were two lines of argument in telling those possibly affected.
   
   "One might assert that people have a right to know about something which affects or may affect them, particularly something so serious.
   
   "It is paternalistic rather than respectful of autonomy to decide for someone else that the likelihood of some bad consequence is so little that they don't need to know it is a possibility."
   
   Professor Crosthwaite said the comparative harms of telling or not telling were debatable.

2. 2. Australasian Bioethics Information

   www.australasianbioethics.org/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/28/2001   Last Visited: 1/28/2008

   A lecturer in medical ethics at the University of Auckland, Dr Jan Crosthwaite, said that she did not object but she conceded that if one felt that "it's wrong to ever use a person as a means to somebody else's end, then you'd have a serious concern about whether children are being conceived as instruments for others.

3. 3. Having A Child To Save Another's Life – 'Selective Breeding' Or Noble Aim?

   www.acljlife.org/../../../news - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/27/2001   Last Visited: 4/2/2006

   Dr. Jan Crosthwaite, a senior lecturer in medical ethics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, took a similar approach Thursday, noting that some babies were planned primarily to provide a companion for an existing, only child.
   
   Crosthwaite said it was generally felt in the ethics community that a procedure could be seen as acceptable if the risk to the child is minimal, if good will result, and if the end could not be achieved in any other way.
   
   "If you put that sort of reasoning across in this particular case, it would seem to give a reasonable argument for what's going on," she added.
   
   "In my own view, the issue is a matter of whether you can do more good than harm, in a way that is respectful of human relationships."
   
   She conceded that, if one held the opinion that "it's wrong to ever use a person as a means to somebody else's end, then you'd have a serious concern about whether children are being conceived as instruments for others."
   ...
   But Crosthwaite said that there were always moral limits to what one could do to reach a worthwhile aim.
   
   She cited a commonly-used riposte to the argument: If you have five dying patients in a hospital ward, each in desperate need a particular organ donation, would you butcher one of them to save the other four?
   
   "You can't say it's unethical not to save those [four] lives," she said.