Journal Editorials Archives - Protection of Conscience Project Library

(Editorial) Assisted dying: a question of when, not if

Richard Hurley, Tessa Richards, Fiona Godlee

British Medical Journal, BMJ — British Medical Journal

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Doctors’ views on assisted dying are split, and most doctors’ organisations take no position on the issue; a few—including the BMA—oppose legalisation. Their stance matters: lawmakers and judges regularly seek, and listen to, their views. The BMJ has called for the professions’ representatives to take a position of neutrality—neither in support nor opposition—on the grounds that doctors should not obstruct a decision that is for society and parliament to make.

Engaged neutrality is far from an abdication of responsibility. It honours the diversity in professionals’ opinion. We believe that it also enables organisations to facilitate and fully engage with much needed societal conversations about death and what it means to die well.

Neutral organisations can be closely involved in drafting laws and guidelines, which would be impossible if they opposed their existence. They can lobby for the interests of doctors who do not wish to participate, as well as of doctors who do. . .

Hurley R, Richards T, Godlee F. (Editorial) Assisted dying: a question of when, not if. Br. Med. J. 2021;374(2128)

Guest editorial re: conscience in health care

Special edition of The New Bioethics

Mary Neal, Sara Fovargue & Stephen W. Smith

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It is probably fair to say that academic interest in the role of conscience in healthcare (and specifically, in the phenomenon of conscientious objection (CO)) has never been more intense, as evidenced by the volume of articles (and indeed, special issues) devoted to the topic in recent years. The three of us have contributed to this burgeoning literature, writing separately and together.

This special issue of The New Bioethics marks the mid-point of a project devised and co-managed by us and funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Research Networks scheme: the Accommodating Conscience Research Network (ACoRN). Our aim in developing this multidisciplinary network (including academics from arange of disciplines, practitioners, and representatives of professional bodies) is to carve out intellectual space within which to begin exploring conscience/CO inhealthcare from a broadly supportive perspective. Our sense, as participants in academic debates about conscience, is that although the literature contains many rich insights and fascinating discussions, some of the most interesting questions about conscience are being overshadowed by the loudest and most polarized disagreement over whether there is any legitimate role for CO in healthcare at all. This is despite the fact that it seems to us that most contributors adopt positions that are hospitableto the accommodation of CO, at least to some extent and in some circumstances. . . [Full text]

Neal M, Fovargue S, Smith SW. Guest editorial. The New Bioethics. 2019 Sep;25(3): 203-206, DOI:10.1080/20502877.2019.1659485.

(Editor’s Introduction) Examining deeper questions posed by disputes about conscience in medicine

Farr A Curlin, Kevin Powell

Extract
As a whole, this collection of essays raises to the surface some of the key questions that underlie ongoing disputes about health-care practitioners refusing patients’ requests—namely, what is the conscience, and what is medicine? We hope that by foregrounding these questions and offering contrasting responses to them, this collection serves to bring greater clarity to ongoing disputes about what we might reasonably expect of physicians when patients request interventions that physicians do not believe they should provide.

Curlin FA, Powell K. Examining deeper questions posed by disputes about conscience in medicine. Perspect Biol Med. 2019;62(3):379-382.

(Editorial) A right to be unconscious

Julian Savulescu, Janet Radcliffe-Richards

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[Referring to Sinmyee et al] This seems to us to be an important, landmark paper. This is because the issues it addresses are important in their own right: how to ensure death without suffering in jurisdictions where assisted dying (including assisted suicide or euthanasia) is allowed, and also, because the technicalities are the same, in cases of capital punishment by lethal injection. Moreover, the paper shows the potential for the use of anaesthesia in contexts beyond surgery. Anaesthesia in its ordinary uses is intended to facilitate surgery designed to restore a patient to improved health and functioning. In assisted dying, however, there is no question of restoring health. The proposition is to use anaesthesia primarily to prevent suffering in a patient who is about to die and, in this sense, places anaesthesia on a new footing as a primary medical intervention, serving a purpose in its own right. . .

Savulescu J, Radcliffe-Richards J. A right to be unconscious. Anaesthesia. 2019 May; 74(5): 557-559

(Editorial) Physicians are not solely responsible for ensuring access to medical assistance in dying

Diane Kelsall

Canadian Medical Association Journal, CMAJ — Canadian Medical Association Journal

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Patients’ rights to access to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) trumps the religious rights of physicians under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – or so says the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. But ensuring equitable access to health care is a societal responsibility and does not rest solely on the individual physician. Surely there is a way forward that ensures access for patients requesting MAiD without trampling on physician rights enshrined in law.

Kelsall D. Physicians are not solely responsible for ensuring access to medical assistance in dying. CMAJ February 20, 2018 190 (7) E181; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.180153

(Editorial) Conscientious Objection in Medicine: Private Ideological Convictions must not Supercede Public Service Obligations

Udo Schuklenk

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The very idea that we ought to countenance conscientious objection in any profession is objectionable. Nobody forces anyone to become a professional. It is a voluntary choice. A conscientious objector in medicine is not dissimilar to a taxi driver who joins a taxi company that runs a fleet of mostly combustion engine cars and who objects on grounds of conscience to drive those cars due to environmental concerns.

Schuklenk U. (Editorial) Conscientious Objection in Medicine: Private Ideological Convictions must not Supercede Public Service Obligations. Bioethics. 2015 May 09;29(5):ii-iii.

(Editorial) Conscientious objection to the provision of reproductive healthcare

Wendy Chavkin

International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics

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Healthcare providers who cite conscientious objection as grounds for refusing to provide components of legal reproductive care highlight the tension between their right to exercise their conscience and women’s rights to receive needed care. There are also societal obligations and ramifications at stake, including the responsibility for negotiating balance between all of these competing interests. . .

. . . There are too many barriers to access to reproductive health- care. Conscience-based refusal of care may be one that we can successfully address.

Chavkin W. (Editorial) Conscientious objection to the provision of reproductive healthcare. Int J Gynec Obstet. 2013 Dec;123(SUPPL.3):s39-s40.

An Examination of Conscience

Mark J Kissler

American Medical Association Journal of Ethics

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The need for protection of conscience within medicine is evidence of precisely this kind of moral fragmentation. Bound by a common profession and motivation to heal, we still can be moral strangers. Physicians seek protection when encountering divisive issues, such as abortion or physician-assisted suicide. The problem is not so much that these disagreements are intractable, but that they embody different (often implicit) conceptions of the ends of medicine. There is a rift at the foundation; and so it is necessary to ask again what medicine is for, what the role of healer is.

Kissler MJ. An Examination of Conscience. Am Med Ass J Ethics (Virtual Mentor). 2013 Mar;15(3):185-187.

(Editorial) Conscientious objection in developing countries

Debora Dinez

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The administration of former President George W. Bush and the subsequent revival of the abortion disputes in the United States have put the ethical challenges of conscientious objection in the spotlight in many international journals on bioethics in the last decade. . . . In the last few years some clear administrative guidelines have been drawn up, considering the institutional realities of developed countries, most of them with private healthcare systems. These include rules that the objection or refusal is an individual right and not an institutional right and healthcare providers have a duty to refer a woman to a similar health care service provider.

I would suggest that this is not the reality for many developing countries.

Diniz D. Conscientious objection in developing countries. Dev World Bioeth. 2010 Apr;10(1):ii. PubMed PMID: 20433463.

(Editorial) Conscience and the Unconscionable

Robert Baker

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The challenge is thus to accommodate conscience- based treatment refusals without jeopardizing the foundations of pluralistic medical professionalism. I believe that medical professionals functioning in pluralistic healthcare settings may be excused from providing certain information or services if they apologize to those in need of this aid, and if those in need of aid can be assured equitable access to the information or services in question. Note carefully, I am proposing conditions for excusing professionals who fail to maintain moral neutrality; I am not defending a right to conscience-based denials of healthcare, or ‘civil rights’ protections for refusers. . .Refusals to refer to other professionals or to transfer prescriptions are inexcusable.

Baker R. (Editorial) Conscience and the Unconscionable. Bioethics. 2009;23(5):350-352.