This paper (2020) reviews the safety and efficacy of psilocybin- and MDMA-assisted therapies and argues that it can be rational for some patients to try compassionate psychedelic therapy, notwithstanding the uncertainty of outcomes, as the expected value of psychotherapy can outweigh the expected value of routine care, palliative care, or no care at all. They also address the epistemic risk carried by the notion that psychedelics are philosophically deceptive given that the subjective effects may often feel more real than normal consciousness, but the authors argue that it is not known how classical psychedelics influence one’s beliefs or whether they make one metaphysically irrational, and assert that metaphysics should be ignored in medicine as much as possible. While acknowledging that there are suboptimal uses of psychedelics, the authors see no ethical barriers for their compassionate use in palliative care.
- Published
- Journal
- Medicine Health Care and Philosophy
- Authors
- Greif, A., Šurkala, M.