No One With A Conscience Need Apply

Here's an editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine arguing that anyone unwilling to do whatever "Science" can do is unfit for the medical profession. Doctors must be "selfless," you see, and moral scruples are the height of selfishness.

Conscientious objection makes sense with conscription, but it is worrisome when professionals who freely chose their field parse care and withhold information that patients need. As the gatekeepers to medicine, physicians and other health care providers have an obligation to choose specialties that are not moral minefields for them. Qualms about abortion, sterilization, and birth control? Do not practice women's health. Believe that the human body should be buried intact? Do not become a transplant surgeon. Morally opposed to pain medication because your religious beliefs demand suffering at the end of life? Do not train to be an intensivist. Conscience is a burden that belongs to the individual professional; patients should not have to shoulder it.

What about my right as a patient not to have to shoulder the burden of wondering if my doctor will respect my views and fight for my life or the life of my child rather than imposing his own "quality of life" and "futile care" theories upon me? Debate about ethical problems is to be shut down, and the health care market monopolized by one kind of doctor appealing to one kind of patient?

The NEJM is seriously proposing to turn over the entire field of medicine to people who vow up front there is nothing they would not do?

"Never again," we cry. But the "N" is silent.

Curtsy: Secondhand Smoke