We elect our politicians to take account from experts of a wider range of factors than the will of the people on specific issues, such as capital punishment and assisted suicide. In the case of the latter, almost the entire medical profession is arraigned against proposals for legalised assisted suicide, in the shape of trade unions and professional bodies such as the British Medical Association, the General Medical Council and the Royal College of Physicians.
Doctors’ resistance is rooted in the prospect of the administration of death as a clinical practice. It is one thing, they argue, to provide an assessment of a patient’s health for insurance purposes or fitness to travel; quite another and wholly compromising of a professional duty of care to do so as a justification for ending a life.
That is partly why a simple majority in a public poll, for whom the prospect of a lethal dose from a doctor is a logical extension of consumer choice, cannot be the sole or even principal guide for changing law in matters of life and death. There is too much at stake. And not just for the sick and dying and for those who care for them, but for all of us.
In point of fact, there is absolutely no reason why physicians need to be involved in assisted suicide at all. It is not particularly difficult to bump somebody off. Folks in the ghetto manage to figure it out without a medical degree, and a well trained tech or undertaker could easily dispatch Granny painlessly, with nothing more than a protocol to follow. The only reason to have physicians involved is to disguise killing as “medical care”. Having assisted suicide be handled by the undertaker would, in fact, be much more efficient than involving the cast of thousands at the hospital, and conveying the body to the funeral home.
However, I have no doubt that assisted suicide will come. I understand from my medical students that their “ethics class” last year had a mandatory session on the pros and cons of Netherland style assisted suicide, all given in a nicely neutral fashion. I’m told that it is one of the new government mandated training points that medical schools need to touch on to ensure they remain accredited.
I have warned my students not to enter Pediatrics, Neurology, Psychiatry or Geriatrics as these will be the fields where their conscience is most likely to be forced. (They already know that you can’t be pro-life and be an Obstetrician as, if you fail to abort your patient’s child when she finds out that he/she has Downs, you are charged with “abandonment”). It’s sort of like Pelosi saying that “Catholics shouldn’t be ER physicians”. In point of fact, Catholics would have a tough time being many other kinds of physicians in the brave new world voted in by American Idiots in 2008.
On the good side, once all you Hopeful Democrats have gotten in all your new regulations, Social Security, Disability and Medicare costs will fall dramatically, saving the rear ends of our glorious leaders. Enjoy the Change you voted for. You are unlikely to enjoy it, or anything else as long as you may have previously expected.
Clueless,
On a point of information, would the “abandonment” charge hold if the obstetrician made it clear in the preliminary consultation that he or she were pro-life?
I would have thought that in the current climate – when the number of those in obstetrics are falling – a pro-life physician would have greater ability to uphold their convictions than in the past. If it’s a choice between no obstetrician and one who’s pro-life, I suspect most would go with the latter.
The abandonment charge would hold if the obstetrician failed to assist the patient in finding an abortion provider. Otherwise he would be expected to provide the service himself. Stating that one’s moral convictions prevented abortion does not protect one from a charge of abandonment. Further, most obstetricians are required to provide free service in the ER for emergencies. They (like ER docs or other specialists) do not have freedom of conscience there. The fact that high risk obstetricians are almost impossible to find has not permitted them freedom of conscience any more than it has reduced their malpractice liability. The American people prefer to do without obsetricians (after all they can always abort) then to suffer them to be permitted a conscience.
Thank you for enlightening me, though it is hardly cheering news.