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31 HEC F. 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/hecforum31 and id is 1 raw text is: HEC Forum (2019) 31:1-10 https://doi.org/1 0.1007/s10730-018-9366-3 CrossMark Problematic Ethics: Public Opinion Surveys in Medico-legal Disputes Tom Koch1' Published online: 17 October 2018 © Springer Nature B.V. 2018 Abstract Public opinion surveys and polls have a long history as tools for the reportage of public sentiment. Born in the straw polls of nineteenth century politics, their use expanded in the last century to include a range of commercial and social subjects. In recent decades, these have included issues of medico-legal uncertainty including, in a partial list, abortion, fetal tissue research, and the propriety of medical termina- tion. Because public opinion surveys are assumed to be scientific, and thus unbi- ased, there has been little discussion of either their suitability in areas of complex, medico-legal uncertainty or the ethics of their use in these areas. This paper reviews their general history and then their use in the debate over medical termination, often called medical aid in dying. In this review, two problems are highlighted. First, there is the ambiguous nature of polls and the manner of their construction. Second, there is the manner in which they are deployed as simple and definitive statements in areas of complex medico-legal debate. The result calls for caution in their use by ethicists and a clear duty by both academics and journalists to understand the limits of the medium in areas of medico-legal debate and discussion. Keywords Ethics - Bioethics - Medical assistance in dying - Medico-legal debate Physician-assisted death - Polls - Public opinion surveys Introduction Public opinion polls surveying local or national populations have long been a staple of media reportage. Newspapers, radio stations, and magazines have used them repeatedly in the coverage of not only political contests-their traditional bailiwick (Hillygus 2011)-but in defence of the moral permissibility of, among E Tom Koch tomkoch@kochworks.com; tom.koch@geog.ubc.ca Department of Geography (Medical), University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, Canada 2 Alton Medical Centre, 1302 Queen St. W., Toronto, ON, Canada I_) Springer

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