Life depends on care
The Vatican is holding a conference over this weekend on infectious diseases and health care, because the field keeps getting more complex and the rules keep getting more dangerous for patients.
On the subject of closeness to the sick, Benedict XVI mentioned “the rich tradition of the Catholic Church,” which, he said, “must be kept alive by exercising charity towards the suffering, so as to ensure the enduring visibility of values inspired by true humanity and by the Gospel: the dignity of the individual, mercy, and the identification of the sick with Christ. All initiatives are inadequate if they do not make love for man perceptible, a love nourished in the meeting with Christ.
“This irreplaceable proximity to the sick,” he added, “must be united to the evangelization of the cultural environment in which we live.” In this context he mentioned “attitudes of indifference or even of exclusion and rejection,” which are sometimes shown towards the sick in societies fixated with well- being. “Such an attitude is also favored by the image projected by the media of men and women prevalently concerned with physical beauty, health and biological vitality. This is a dangerous cultural tendency that encourages people to focus on self, to close themselves in their own little world, and to avoid committing themselves to serving those in need.
Speaking of serving those in need, doctors are under more and more pressure to help patients die instead of face life with suffering. In Britain, they’re grappling with a profession in conflict.
The legal instruction that doctors should allow their patients to die appears to run counter to the most famous of all declarations of the duties of doctors, the Hippocratic Oath.
The oath, known by the name of the father of modern medicine who lived from 460 to 380 BC, is regarded as the gold standard of medical ethics. Half of British medical schools continue to administer a version of it.
In it the Greeks set out the principles that made their doctors different from primitive sorcerers and witchdoctors – among them the rule that a while a doctor might have the power to cure he should not have the right to kill.
The original oath said: ‘I will not give a fatal draught to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest any such thing.’
Modern versions of the oath have been amended to avoid such forthright pledges.
While some medical schools still use Hippocrates, the British Medical Association also recommends the International Code of Medical Ethics published by the World Medical Association.
This has dropped inconvenient Greek principles such as the refusal to procure abortions.
Well put.
Those who adopt it say they will ‘act in the patient’s best interest when providing medical care.’
The patient’s best interest, according to British courts, does not necessarily include staying alive.
Since the landmark 1993 House of Lords judgement, when doctors were given permission to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from incapacitated Hillsborough disaster victim Tony Bland, in this country a patient’s best interests can legally mean death.
This country, as well. Or maybe it should be…as sick.
Remember Terri Schiavo. That’s not a question.
