While the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) remains controversial in ethical circles, it continues to be recognised in common law courts. In 2015, the High Court of New Zealand became the latest to acknowledge the existence of the DDE, in a case that challenged the prohibition on physician assisted dying. In so doing, the possibility was raised that the DDE could potentially be used in an untraditional way to provide a prima facie justification of "facilitated aid in dying" (FAID) in some cases.In this article, we develop and offer justification for this line of reasoning. If it can be shown that FAID sometimes satisfies the conditions for DDE, this, we suggest, may have significant implications for the aid in dying debate, not only in New Zealand, but more widely. Even if all of the elements of the DDE are not met in such cases, though, we suggest that one of those elements - the doctor's intent in providing FAID - may not always be such as to attract moral blame or criminal culpability.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 14. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 June 2017.
All research outputs
#2,981,113
of 28,833,811 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Medical Ethics
#987
of 3,935 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#42,100
of 318,375 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Medical Ethics
#34
of 89 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,833,811 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 89th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,935 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 21.4. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 74% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 318,375 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 89 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.
