Philos Ethics Humanit Med. July 2, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/can-your-face-reveal-how-long-youll-live-new-technology-may-provide-the-answer/2014/07/02/640bacb4-f748-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html. Before Accessed July 17, 2018. This is not the greatest amount of happiness for the moral agent but the greatest amount of happiness overall - this is known as the greatest happiness principle. Indeed, society as a whole is more important than any one person in the eyes of a Utilitarian. FRT is being developed to predict health characteristics, such as longevity and aging.13 FRT is also being applied to predict behavior, pain, and emotions by identifying facial expressions associated with depression or pain, for example.14,15 Another major area for FRT applications in health care is patient identification and monitoring, such as monitoring elderly patients for safety or attempts to leave a health care facility16 or monitoring medication adherence through the use of sensors and facial recognition to confirm when patients take their medications.17. The consequence of consequentialism is that by taking an impersonal standpoint we alienate ourselves and whilst the consequentialist can argue that this should be a virtue, the expected result of unhappiness shows its inadequacy for this is a high price to pay for a view that values happiness. Do not sell or share my personal information, 1. Facial recognition technology (FRT) utilizes software to map a persons facial characteristics and then store the data as a face template.1 Algorithms or machine learning techniques are applied to a database to compare facial images or to find patterns in facial features for verification or authentication purposes.2 FRT is attractive for a variety of health care applications, such as diagnosing genetic disorders, monitoring patients, and providing health indicator information (related to behavior, aging, longevity, or pain experience, for example).3-5, FRT is likely to become a useful tool for diagnosing many medical and genetic conditions.6,7 Machine learning techniques, in which a computer program is trained on a large data set to recognize patterns and generates its own algorithms on the basis of learning,8 have already been used to assist in diagnosing a patient with a rare genetic disorder that had not been identified after years of clinical effort.9 Machine learning can also detect more subtle correlations between facial morphology and genetic disorders than clinicians.4 It is thought that FRT can therefore eventually be used to assist in earlier detection and treatment of genetic disorders,10,11 and computer applications (commonly known as apps) such as Face2Gene have been developed to assist clinicians in diagnosing genetic disorders.12, FRT has other potential health care applications. Religion plays a large part in the ethical issue of abortion, just like with . Gates KA. https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/ehr-provider-touts-mhealth-access-by-apples-facial-recognition-app. May 17, 2017. https://undark.org/article/facial-recognition-technology-biased-understudied/. Their justification is that this action would produce the most overall welfare.. Consequentialism Consequentialism is an ethical theory that judges whether or not something is right by what its consequences are. Some statutes that protect health information might not apply to FRT. Face recognition methods and applications. This site needs JavaScript to work properly. Weve updated our privacy policy so that we are compliant with changing global privacy regulations and to provide you with insight into the limited ways in which we use your data. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) of 2008, for example, does not apply to FRT for genetic diagnosis, as FRT does not fit GINAs definition of genetic testing or genetic information.39 The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which protects people with disabilities from discrimination in public life (eg, schools or employment),40 would also likely not apply to FRT used for diagnostic purposes if the conditions diagnosed are currently unexpressed. Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies Consequentialism is a normative ethics theory whereby the ends justify the means; in other words, the consequence of an action justifies the moral acceptability of an action of the means taken to reach that end. According to consequentialism, you should always strive to bring about good consequences, rather than simply obeying an arbitrary set of ethical rules. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. 2018;12:300. Recognition of the Cornelia de Lange syndrome phenotype with facial dysmorphology novel analysis. X. Utilitarianism is a moral theory, which works as a form of consequentialism helps individuals to assess whether an action is good or bad. Consequentialism requires that the agent should step outside herself, as it were, and assess the consequences not in terms of prior commitments, but just on the results produced. Agera y Arcas B, Todorov A, Mitchell M. Do algorithms reveal sexual orientation or just expose our stereotypes? Accessed August 1, 2018. According to consequentialism, the right act is that act which has the best consequences. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guests privilege of killing one of the Indians himself. Conclusion: In this example: A hospital has limited capacity to deal with Covid-19 patients and is having to decide between admitting a 20 year old patient, who is fit and well, and a 75 year old patient, who has a history of heart disease, to their last available ventilator. A novel approach to the detection of acromegaly: accuracy of diagnosis by automatic face classification. Consequentialists may try to respond by arguing that alienation and taking an impersonal standpoint can be a virtue, but this seems a high price to pay if the agent is expected to disregard her most fundamental relationships, leaving her deeply unhappy. moral judgments are supposed to be a matter of simple consequentialism: you add up how much suffering you think is caused by an action and balance it against the amount of good. https://research.nhgri.nih.gov/atlas/. Killing the one Indian is going to have a profound effect on Jims life but for the consequentialist, Jims values are irrelevant. Moore 1912, chs. government site. Unable to load your collection due to an error, Unable to load your delegates due to an error. The desire to save people's lives sometimes does not allow doctors to understand that some patients want the opposite. Accessed October 26, 2018. Williams furthers this explanation; making the best of a bad job is one of its maxims, and it will have something to say even on the difference between massacring seven million, and massacring seven million and one (Consequentialism and its Critics, 1988). Machine learning and the profession of medicine. It is not unreasonable to say that in this example you should pause your duck feeding and jump in to save the child. Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on which consequences are best (as opposed to satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo). Activate your 30 day free trialto unlock unlimited reading. Epub 2014 Sep 24. Whenever we are faced with a decision, an act consequentialist will expect us to ask that question. Brostoff G. 3D facial recognition gives healthcare data a new look. Articles, podcasts, videos, research & courses tackling the issues that matter. Indeed, no one can know the future with certainty. MobiHealthNews. This is because all things being equal they will live longer and may contribute more to society over a longer period of time. Activate your 30 day free trialto continue reading. 2021 Sep 17;18(18):9786. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18189786. The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But as previously stated, war and the strife and chaos that comes with it are undesirable; however, in this particular circumstance something that may be bad as war can be said to be a for a good cause. Is it better to give my money to charity or spend it studying medicine so I can save lives? Benthams views are most closely aligned withact utilitarianism. These include efforts to create AI systems that explain the rationale behind the results generated.31 Clinicians can also be trained to consider and respond to limitations and biases of FRT systems.32 In addition, organizations such as the National Human Genome Research Institute have sought to diversify the range of people whose images are included in their image databases.33. In: Philosophical Foundations of Medical Law. Therefore, the absolutist claim that war is wholly a bad thing, or that it cannot be for a good cause despite its undesirability, is reasonably refuted. Consequentialism is an ethical theory that judges whether or not something is right by what its consequences are. Epub 2015 Jan 6. Consequentialism Ethics Consequentialism focus on the outcome or consequence of the actions. Bahrampour T. Can your face reveal how long youll live? Accessed March 28, 2017. There are two broad schools of ethical theory: consequentialism and non-consequentialism. Never kill an innocent person or never lie are examples of such rules. Consequentialism From a consequentialist position the question of whether it is wrong to breach confidentiality is determined by the consequences of the breach. This chapter outlines core characteristics of Utilitarianism and explores them with regard to their significance in healthcare settings. 2016;2016(5):2-3. It is therefore important to weigh the relative benefits and burdens of specific FRT uses in health care and to conduct research into how patients perceive its use. Consumerism in healthcare is not merely about supporting hospitals, insurance companies and other businesses. Benthams theory of utilitarianism focussed on which actions were most likely to make people happy. Disclaimer. Sandolu A. But if telling a lie would help save a person's life, consequentialism says it's the right thing to do. Complex and expensive treatment options have increased the frequency and emphasis of ethical decision-making in healthcare. FRT in health care also raises ethical questions about privacy and data protection, potential bias in the data or analysis, and potential negative implications for the therapeutic alliance in patient-clinician relationships. It gives us this guidance when faced with a moral dilemma: A person should choose the action that maximises good consequences. Being such a controversial topic some might argue that abortion should be considered murder, while others simply see it as a way to get rid of a problem. 14,15 Another major area for FRT applications in health care is patient identification and monitoring, such . For instance, most people would agree that lying is wrong. So, to decide whether or not to take some step, we must calculate whether it will produce the best overall outcome for the highest number of people. For consequentialism, life is a numbers game; an action should aim to make the majority happy, regardless of who they are, and should aim to go for actions that produce minimal pain. The committee evaluates the impact of relationships on health care. Broader influence of FRT. FRT raises novel challenges regarding privacy. The lack of respect for the integrity of the individual is raised by Bernard Williams' famous 'Jim and the . For consequentialism this is not a problem, as the individual is just a mechanism for maximising overall happiness; they are instrumental. PMC (b). But Jim has to actively kill someone unlike the duck feeder for whom the only bad consequences are that he will get wet and muddy. Using the example of Jim and the Indians, Williams successfully illustrates that consequentialism fails to respect the integrity of the individual because in deciding what is wrong or right what really matters is not the action but the outcome of it. But it's more than just one rival among many, for every plausible moral theory must concede that the goodness of an act's consequences is something that matters even if it's not the only thing that matters. Cachn-Prez JM, Gonzalez-Villanueva P, Rodriguez-Garcia M, Oliva-Fernandez O, Garcia-Garcia E, Fernandez-Gonzalo JC. and transmitted securely. According to this theory, it would be unethical for you to speed on an empty street at two oclock in the morning. Hossain MS, Muhammad G. Cloud-assisted framework for health monitoring. Would you like email updates of new search results? Also, it does not matter who performs the action, only the action itself as Williams example shows. As with any new health technology, careful attention should be paid to the accuracy and validity of FRT used in health care applications as well as to informed consent and reporting incidental findings to patients. consequentialism, In ethics, the doctrine that actions should be judged right or wrong on the basis of their consequences. Because it counted every persons pleasure or pain as the same, regardless of age, wealth, race, etc. An interpretive exploratory study was undertaken, 11 registered acute care nurses working in a district general hospital in England were interviewed, using semi-structured interviews. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occasion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all The men against the wall and the other villagers understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. The most famous version of non-consequentialism is deontology, which holds that one has an absolute duty to obey certain rules. P2. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. Tunkelang D. Ten things everyone should know about machine learning. Robert Torrance continues a debate, started by Charlotte Blease in an earlier issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, about what conditions must be met in order for patients to consent to receive electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) ( see page 371 ). We will describe some examples of the influence of consequentialism over current medical law.