Bush to allow doctors to ignore hippocratic oath

[elcalvo]

The article originally quoted referenced issues such as:

contraception
abortion
sperm donations
birth control
artificial insemination
morning-after pill
end-of-life care

You added stem-cell therapy.
How about assisted suicide as well?

Some of these areas can involve pressing life and death decisions. Others are pretty clearly elective.

Sincere people have made different decisions with regard to all of these questions. I am sure that you have considered at least some of them as well.

Are you suggesting that because someone is a medical professional, they are required to ignore their personal moral beliefs and blindly carry out actions they believe to be morally wrong?

 

[VaB]

el_calvo,

you and I both know that you cannot, nor should not separate morals and medicine. All chuck is saying is that when it comes down to it, he wants to be the one to decide what is too risky and not be limited. It is the docs responsibility to act in the patients best interest, not necessarily agreeing with the pt.

We also know that many people consider lots of good docs quacks because the don't yield to the patients demands.

it is what it is.

 

[elcalvo]

Agreed.

(Does this mean that you would refuse to take hair grafts from my daughters' bichon frise and transplant them into me so I could change my name? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />)

 

[elcalvo]

Clearly a medical professional should inform his patient of all reasonable, available options. However, the patient should not expect him to violate his own ethics and perform procedures that he does not believe to be ethically or morally acceptable.

Just to broaden this out from medical treatment to life in general; it has been my experience that if someone is willing to violate his ethics in one part of his life, he would be willing to do so in pretty much any other dealings he has as well.

While even the most moral of people have lapses and make mistakes, if someone makes the concious decision to violate their own moral principles as a matter of practise, I would not trust him.

Edited to add:
Would you really want the medical profession to be made up entirely of people who were not willing to stick to their own moral convictions?

 

[elcalvo]

Clearly a medical professional should inform his patient of all reasonable, available options. However, the patient should not expect him to violate his own ethics and perform procedures that he does not believe to be ethically or morally acceptable.

Just to broaden this out from medical treatment to life in general; it has been my experience that if someone is willing to violate his ethics in one part of his life, he would be willing to do so in pretty much any other dealings he has as well.

While even the most moral of people have lapses and make mistakes, if someone makes the concious decision to violate their own moral principles as a matter of practise, I would not trust him.

Edited to add:
Would you really want the medical profession to be made up entirely of people who were not willing to stick to their own moral convictions?

Every medical professional should put the well-being of their patient first. Most good ones do. Scroll up in this thread and read about my grandfather and what happened when a bible thumping nurse put her morals before his wishes and the compassionate Doctor who put his career on the line to help my grandfather.

I read that and I fully understand your feelings. I experienced a very similar situation at 3 AM in the hospital. In my case, it was the nurse who respected the legally expressed and recorded wishes of my mother and her family and refused to obey the doctor's orders to administer treatment that we did not want. When the doctor returned he was quite upset that his instructions were not carried out and we went toe to toe for a few minutes before he finally backed down. After he left, I told the nurse to please let me know if she faced any repercussions for her actions as we would certainly do all we could to back her up.

I would though, disagree with your assesment as to who was the one with moral convictions in your difficult circumstance.

The nurse who ignored your grandfather's legal and reasonable wishes and imposed her morality on him was the one who acted in an inmoral way. She had no legal, ethical or moral right to treat someone against their will.

The doctor, on the other hand, followed his moral convictions and acted against the rules because in his judgement, it was the right thing to do in this case to assist his patient.

If the doctor did not decide that his strong moral convictions took precedence over the government imposed rules, he would not have acted the way he did.

 

[blakestah]

Personally, I prefer the world in which the medical profession makes the decisions about what is ethical in the medical profession, and the government, and the individual doctors, get to just deal with it in their own ways.

So if a doctor is behaving unethically he will go to hospital prison? <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Who will enforce the ethical law?

Surely you don't propose self-regulation?

No, the medical profession sets legal standards for ethics in their profession, which are legally enforced by the relevant policing body (ie: regular police).