When Bioethicists Attack Medical Conscience

Many big shots in the bioethics community continue to argue against “medical conscience,” insisting that doctors should be forced to perform all requested legal medical procedures — even if it involves the taking of human life — that can produce the result the patient wants.

In the latest ani-conscience broadside, published in the professional journal Bioethics, two internationally known bioethicists, Julian Savulescu and Udo Schuklenk, take an almost absolutist position:

Our argument is that patients have a right to receive health care when four necessary conditions are satisfied (citations omitted):

1. The treatment is legal in that jurisdiction.
2. Providing the treatment is consistent with constraints of distributive justice.
3. The treatment is in the patient's interests.
4. The patient autonomously desires the treatment.

The doctors define "patient's interest" as a "benefit recognisable within accepted professional standards of benefit and harm." Note carefully that these are often ideological, as opposed to medical, positions.