Category: Ethics

Conscientious objection to “patriarchal norms”

 Hymen restoration and ‘virginity certificates’ in Sweden

Bioedge

 Michael Cook*

Informed consent and conscientious objection are easy to fulminate about, but tricky to discuss with consistency. Take, for instance, the delicate topic of requests for hymen restorations and virginity certificates. Worldwide, an estimated 5,000 women were victims of honour killings in 2000. If a young woman from a culture which sanctions honour killing approaches a doctor, what should he or she do?

Refusal is not a popular or even, in some jurisdictions, a legal option for doctors who are asked to refer for an abortion or to prescribe contraception. But a request which reinforces “patriarchal norms” is different.
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Complicity after the fact

Moral blindness becomes a virtue and necessity

US scientists were “accomplices after the fact” in Japanese doctors’ war crimes

Bioedge

Michael Cook*

All of contemporary bioethics springs from the Nuremberg Doctors Trial in 1947. Seven Nazi doctors and officials were hanged and nine received severe prison sentences for performing experiments on an estimated 25,000 prisoners in concentration camps without their consent. Only about 1,200 died but many were maimed and psychologically scarred.

So what did the US do to the hundreds of Japanese medical personnel who experimented on Chinese civilians and prisoners of war of many nationalities, including Chinese, Koreans, Russians, Australians, and Americans? They killed an estimated 3,000 people in the infamous Unit 731 in Harbin, in northeastern China before and during World War II – plus tens of thousands of civilians when they field-tested germ warfare. Many of the doctors were academics from Japan’s leading medical schools.
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Christian conscience in a secular culture

 Reflections of an ecumenical Pentecostal

Daniel Tomberlin*

. . .The Gospel of Christ should inform believers on the political left and right, and convict sinners on the left and right. The Incarnation (God with us) means that Christ is above, in, and with all human endeavors. So yes, Christian theology and ethics should seek to inform and shape public life. That means that individual Christians, and Christian institutions, have an obligation to exercise a Christ-shaped conscience.

So then, how does a Christian exercise conscience in a pagan or secular culture? Should believers bow before the idol of state for the sake of peace?  . . .[Full Text]

 

Does medical education make physicians susceptible to participating in torture?

  • Craig Klugman* | . . . Medical education does not provide courses in moral courage, defying authority, or turning against the tide of one’s peers. In fact, medical education encourages group think, keeping your head down and knowing your place in the hierarchy, and seeking out the approval of your peers. . .
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Health professionals participated in cruelty and torture

Medical, Military, and Ethics Experts Say Health Professionals Designed and Participated in Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment and Torture of Detainees

New York, NY — An independent panel of military, ethics, medical, public health, and legal experts today charged that U.S. military and intelligence agencies directed doctors and psychologists working in U.S. military detention centers to violate standard ethical principles and medical standards to avoid infliction of harm. The Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers (see attached) concludes that since September 11, 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) and CIA improperly demanded that U.S. military and intelligence agency health professionals collaborate in intelligence gathering and security practices in a way that inflicted severe harm on detainees in U.S. custody.

These practices included “designing, participating in, and enabling torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment” of detainees, according to the report. Although the DoD has taken steps to address some of these practices in recent years, including instituting a committee to review medical ethics concerns at Guantanamo Bay Prison, the Task Force says the changed roles for health professionals and anemic ethical standards adopted within the military remain in place. [Full report]