Religious venture definition6/29/2023 These disagreements are the source of fears that are larger than disputes about individual cases. Medical practice seems to have become everybody's business.Īlong with other aspects of life, it becomes increasingly specialized and at the same time seeks legitimation in a democratic forum.Īt the heart of these discussions are disagreements about proper modes of treatment. The interacting roles of patient and physician are reexamined the numbers of ethics committees and review boards grow pressure groups and lobbies emerge. Though all of medical practice is not disputed, the number of significant problems and the lack of consensus in dealing with them set a context for scrutiny by an increasingly broad public. Questions about the rationing of care appear just when physicians are charged with overtreating patients. Litigation increases amid important questions about the relation of causal accountability to moral and legal responsibility. The costs of health care rise amid serious debates about access to care and the adequacy of health insurance. The search for guidance does not take place in a vacuum, but in the context of a perceived erosion of confidence. To set limits and attain possibilities, of course, are ways of specifying what may be done in particular cases, that is, of redefining medical practice. We are grateful for benefits, yet we fear deleterious consequences, so we search for guidance by exploring possibilities and seeking limits, understanding that limits have their own consequences. We respond to innovations in medical technology with wonder and awe. May physicians assist in actively terminating human lives? Is it permissible to use human fetal tissue in medical research? Under what conditions, if any, should patients receive organ transplants from nonhuman animals? The central issue in these and other questions is whether what can be done technically ought to be done morally. Well-known examples are subject to public debate. They also call into question some of the standard ways of dealing with typical cases. The explosion of knowledge in biology and other fields of inquiry, combined with recent innovations in medical technology, dramatically increase the human capacity to intervene in the natural life process. These and other factors, however, require an ethos of support. Also important are a long history of care, professional training and socialization, and accepted ways of assimilating new knowledge. Practices are justified by explicitly stated moral values and characteristic ways of understanding and so interpreting illness. By practice, I mean standard ways to deal with typical cases that emerge over time and are accepted by medical practitioners and society. Dean of the Faculty, Union Theological Seminary in Virginiaīiomedical decisions usually focus on specific problems or cases, and particular decisions gain standing and legitimacy when they become part of a practice.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |