CNN has reported that at least 40 American veterans at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system have died because they did not receive timely medical care. The report exposes the duplicitous practice of maintaining a “secret” list of patients with actual wait times, and an “official” wait list used to make it appear that all veterans are receiving treatment within 14 to 30 days. In reality, about 1,400 to 1,600 veterans have been waiting months for treatment. According to a physician interviewed by CNN and emails obtained by the news agency, staff at Phoenix Veterans Affairs were aware that the practice is unethical. The physician interviewed described them as “frustrated” and “upset,” but afraid to “speak out or say anything” because they know they will be fired if they do. [CNN]
Category: Ethics
RCOG faculty bars prolife doctors from receiving its degrees and diplomas
Doctors and nurses who have a moral objection to prescribing ‘contraceptives’ which act by killing human embryos are to be barred from receiving diplomas in sexual and reproductive health even if they undertake the necessary training according to new guidelines.
Under new rules issued by the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health (FSRH) earlier this year these doctors and nurses are also to be barred from membership of the faculty and from specialty training.
The FSRH is a faculty of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists established on the 26th March 1993 as the Faculty of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. In 2007 it changed its name to the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare. [Full Text]
Scandal of the doctors who were let off after approving abortions for women they’d never even met
67 doctors were identified in an investigation by NHS watchdog
Care Quality Commission said they illegally signed blank abortion forms
But none of them will be brought before a fitness to practise hearing
Daily Mail
Dozens of doctors found to be signing off abortions for women they had never met will not face any disciplinary action, it was revealed yesterday.
The 67 doctors were identified in an investigation by NHS watchdog the Care Quality Commission as having illegally signed blank abortion forms, which should be filled in only once they have a thorough understanding of a woman’s circumstances.
One of the doctors had signed so many blank forms that they were still being used by the abortion clinic four years after he left.
All 67 were referred to the General Medical Council but a Freedom of Information request has now established that none of them will be brought before a fitness to practise hearing, where they could be disciplined, suspended, or struck off.
The GMC has also refused to pass the names to the police, even though the offence can merit a jail sentence. [Full Text]
Genetic screening to improve intelligence
Writing in The Conversation, ethicist Julian Savulescu discusses recently published findings that indicate that children with two copies of a common gene (Thr92Ala) and low thyroid hormone levels apparently increase the likelihood of low IQ by a factor of four. Since the “risk of low intelligence” depends upon both the genetic configuration and hormonal level, he suggests that such children could be treated with supplemental thyroid hormones “to enhance their intelligence.”
The “low intelligence” to which he refers is the 4 % of the U.K. population estimated to have an IQ of between 70 and 85.
“If we could enhance their intelligence, say with thyroid hormone supplementation,” he writes, “we should.”
Savulescu’s focus on intelligence in this case should not become a distraction. Supplementing hormones seems to present no special ethical problems, since the goal in that case would not be eugenic perfectionism or enhancement, but therapeutic correction of a deficiency. However, Savulescu goes beyond this to propose that IVF embryos be screened, and that embryos found to have two copies of the Thr92Ala gene not be selected for implantation. What is unstated is that the ‘defective’ embryos should be killed. This would be an ethical/moral problem for anyone who holds that deliberately killing human embryos is wrong.
Entrenching a ‘duty to do wrong’ in medicine
Canadian government funds project to suppress freedom of conscience and religion
A 25 year old woman who went to an Ottawa walk-in clinic for a birth control prescription was told that the physician offered only Natural Family Planning and did not prescribe or refer for contraceptives or related services. She was given a letter explaining that his practice reflected his “medical judgment” and “professional ethical concerns and religious values.” She obtained her prescription at another clinic about two minutes away and posted the physician’s letter on Facebook. The resulting crusade against the physician and two like-minded colleagues spilled into mainstream media and earned a blog posting by Professor Carolyn McLeod on Impact Ethics.
Professor McLeod objects to the physicians’ practice for three reasons. First: it implies – falsely, in her view – that there are medical reasons to prefer natural family planning to manufactured contraceptives. Second, she claims that refusing to refer for contraceptives and abortions violates a purported “right” of access to legal services. Third, she insists that the physician should have met the patient to explain himself, and then helped her to obtain contraception elsewhere by referral. Along the way, she criticizes Dr. Jeff Blackmer of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) for failing to denounce the idea that valid medical judgement could provide reasons to refuse to prescribe contraceptives. . .
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