Substituted Judgment Standards

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RECONSTRUCTION Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress argue that the substituted judgement standard, as opposed to the pure autonomy standard and the best interests standard, is a “weak standard” of autonomy (64). In order to argue this, he outlines the relevant steps that help form his argument. First off, this judgment standard is requiring that the surrogate decision maker is to make the decision that the incompetent person would have made if he was indeed competent. Secondly, there were issues with court hearings on whether or not the surrogate decision maker was making the same choice that the incompetent person would’ve made if they were competent. Thirdly, an incompetent individual has no right to make medical decision when there are other competent persons that actually exercise this right. With these relevant steps, Beauchamp and Childress provide the definition of the substituted judgment standard as “the decision about treatment properly belongs to the incompetent patient by virtue of their rights of autonomy and/or privacy” (64). …show more content…
If this occurs, the surrogate decision maker needs to have relevant familiarity with the patient and his/her views and values; barely knowing them is not adequate enough for this important of a decision. Also formed from the relevant steps, it can be said that one should reject the substituted judgment standard for never-competent patients; one should have no autonomous choice if one has never been autonomous at all (64-65). Beauchamp and Childress go on to later say that the substituted judgment standard is a standard that help us lay out a course of action for once-competent