Chemists around the world must demand the right to “conscientious objection” and refuse to sell medicines – even though they are legal in many countries – that cause euthanasia or abortion, including the so-called “morning-after pill”, Pope Benedict XVI said this week.
Speaking at the Vatican on Monday to the International Federation of Catholic Pharmacists (IFCP), the Pope said: “In the moral realm, your federation is invited to confront the question of conscientious objection.” He said this was “a right that must be recognised” for all chemists, because they could not “collaborate – directly or indirectly – in furnishing products” intended for “clearly immoral choices”.
He said that pharmacists could only sell drugs that “truly fulfilled their healing role” and protected “every being” from “conception to natural death”.
But the Pope said refusal to sell such “immoral” drugs was only part of the pharmacist’s duty. He pointed out that chemists also played an “educative role” in their work as “intermediaries between doctor and patient”. And, therefore, they had a duty to inform their customers of the “ethical implications” inherent in using certain drugs. “It is not possible to anaesthetise consciences,” he said, “for example, about the effects of molecules [of a drug] that prevent the implantation of an embryo or abbreviate a person’s life.”
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Pope tells chemists to refuse to sell ”˜immoral’ drugs
Chemists around the world must demand the right to “conscientious objection” and refuse to sell medicines – even though they are legal in many countries – that cause euthanasia or abortion, including the so-called “morning-after pill”, Pope Benedict XVI said this week.
Speaking at the Vatican on Monday to the International Federation of Catholic Pharmacists (IFCP), the Pope said: “In the moral realm, your federation is invited to confront the question of conscientious objection.” He said this was “a right that must be recognised” for all chemists, because they could not “collaborate – directly or indirectly – in furnishing products” intended for “clearly immoral choices”.
He said that pharmacists could only sell drugs that “truly fulfilled their healing role” and protected “every being” from “conception to natural death”.
But the Pope said refusal to sell such “immoral” drugs was only part of the pharmacist’s duty. He pointed out that chemists also played an “educative role” in their work as “intermediaries between doctor and patient”. And, therefore, they had a duty to inform their customers of the “ethical implications” inherent in using certain drugs. “It is not possible to anaesthetise consciences,” he said, “for example, about the effects of molecules [of a drug] that prevent the implantation of an embryo or abbreviate a person’s life.”
Read it all.