ORIGINAL RESEARCH

The ‘sovereign decision’ in the discourse of medical ethics

Lukovich M1, Meistorovich K2, Knezhevich D3
About authors

1 Febris Medical Center, Čačak, Serbia

2 Higher School of Business Economics and Entrepreneurship, Belgrade, Serbia

3 Serbian Clinical Center, Clinics of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Belgrade, Serbia

About paper

Author contribution: Lukovich M — study concept and design, source analysis, writing a text; Meistorovich K — study concept and design, text editing; Knezhevich D — text editing.

Received: 2023-08-16 Accepted: 2023-09-12 Published online: 2023-09-12
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Recently, there has been tension is our society because of health-associated problems resulting from at least two factors. First, we are facing collision of neoliberal economics with the traditional ethics of our society. Simplistic understandings of social tendencies typical of our society and processes within the global community provoke a reaction in the form of various conspiracy theories supported by a dualistic ethical approach within our society. In one case, it is based on neoliberal trends and is increasingly manifested through the views of non-governmental organizations. In the other case, it is extremely conservative and tied to the traditional morality. The politics that tends to act within the bounds of the possible goes through both options, creating even more confusion. Another factor, which is no less important, includes blurred connotation and denotation of such notions as ‘freedom’, ‘sovereign’, ‘sovereign decision’, ‘human life sacredness’, resulting in various misinterpretations. The purpose of this article is to review the occurring dilemmas by disclosing the terms in the historical context. The possible conclusion is that the common global tendency of law harmonization under the influence of neoliberal economics is far from the dream about the Perpetual Peace as seen by Kant two hundred years ago. Regular standards that form the basis of the social ethics occupy less space in the legislation just like the ethics itself, even if used as a corrective measure, with economic logics taking up a larger place. There will be a ‘market price’ for everything (Kant). In the light of the above, we tried to review vaccination and euthanasia as two very specific and pressing issues.

Keywords: vaccination, medical ethics, sovereign, sovereign decision, ‘sacredness of life’, euthanasia

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