Category: Procedures & Services

Assisted suicide bill proposed in Scotland lacks protection of conscience provision

Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill

An assisted suicide bill has been introduced in the Scots Parliament by M.S.P. Margo MacDonald.  The bill proposes that Scotland provide licensed suicide facilitators to (among other things) “provide, before, during and after the act of suicide (or attempted suicide) by the person for whom the facilitator is acting, such practical assistance as the person reasonably requests.”  It appears that the bill does not require physicians to participate directly in suicide, but they are expected to record and endorse declarations and requests for suicide in a patient’s medical record to confirm that they meet the criteria in the bill.  Physicians who oppose assisted suicide might well object to completing the paperwork required to facilitate it.  There is no reference to protection of conscience in the bill, and it is silent as to the means by which suicide is to be achieved.

 

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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Majority of Italian obstetricians refuse to perform abortions

According to a report from the Italian Ministry of Health, the abortion rate has continued to drop in the country, a trend evident since 1982.  There has also been an increase in conscientious objection to abortion among health care workers.  In Campania, almost 90% of gynaecologists refuse to perform the procedure, and the rate for all of southern Italy is about 80%.

In response, the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), a national labour union, has demanded that only physicians willing to perform abortions should be employed in the public health system.  However, the Ministry’s own statistics demonstrate that 95 percent of requested abortions are performed within three weeks,
while 90 percent are not considered medically urgent. Lawyer Giacomo Rocchi, also an Italian Supreme Court magistrate, went to Strasbourg to represent a number of associations in their defence of freedom of conscience.[LifeSite News]

 

 

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]

 

Reprehensible comments by Australian physician

Efforts to support freedom of conscience in health care in Australia have been tarnished  by comments made on Facebook posts by a physician identified only as “Dr. K” .  The physician became the subject of an investigation and disciplinary hearing after the posts were reported to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.  In addition to asserting that he refused to refer for abortions, the physician made several reprehensible remarks.   Among them was an assertion that a woman who dies from injuries incurred in a “back alley abortion” deserved to die “for trying to kill her own child.”  A physician’s group supporting freedom of conscience in health care issued a statement that it “vehemently disagrees with and utterly repudiates the idea and sentiment that any woman deserves any kind of harm for any reason whatsoever.”  [The Age]