Not all cultural traditions have the same conception of personhood. In Confucianism, self-individuation takes place only through engagement with others in the context of one’s social roles and relationships.
One of the many doors money and power often open gives access to opioids where they would otherwise be withheld without strict oversight and management. Elvis Presley provides perhaps the most famous example of unmanaged access to drugs.
The greatest pressure to resuscitate the extremely low-birth-weight infant often results from successful marketing efforts that lead families to expect that their premature infants will be cute and healthy.
The first women’s movement in the mid-nineteenth century endorsed anesthesia during childbirth and some of the very patterns of obstetric practice that became anathema to the natural childbirth movement a century later.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):253-257. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.msoc1-1503.