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Eating Or Treating?: Legal And Bioethical Issues Surrounding Anorexia Nervosa
Simona Giordano*
* The Institute of Medicine, Law and Bioethics The Victoria University of Manchester, UNITED KINGDOM
Disclosing difficulties, posing the best questions, is one of the most important and difficult tasks of philosophy. This article highlights the legal, conceptual and ethical difficulties relating to the refusal of treatment for anorexia nervosa. In England, the case of anorexia nervosa has appeared before the courts, and has given rise to peculiar legal and moral issues. Due to the spread of the disorder also in non-European countries, it is likely that similar issues will also arise in other parts of the world. Therefore, the English experience is reported, as it may help anticipating legal and related ethical problems relating to anorexia nervosa. A part of these issues seems to be linked to the fact that refusing treatment for anorexia nervosa sometimes means refusing a life-saving treatment. This sets the issue of consent to or refusal of treatment at the boundary between informed consent and ending-life decisions. Therefore, a number of problems, terminological, conceptual, and ethical in nature, surrounding ending-life, arise in the case of anorexia nervosa. In this article, these problems are highlighted.Keywords: Anorexia nervosa, Consent to treatment,
Ending-life decisionsT Klin J Med Ethics 1999, 7:53-59
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