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The Harms of the Cleansing of Conscience Objection on the Practice of Medicine

Jones-Nosacek, Cynthia
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5129-8626
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu160674338681952

Abstract Details

2020, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Bioethics.
Secular bioethicists such as Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emmanuel (among others) look at controversial issues such as abortion and reproductive health and have declared that consensus has been reached. Those who disagree are told that if they cannot sacrifice their consciences, they should sacrifice their careers. They assert that people who agree to enter the field of medicine are bound by the decisions of various medical societies, even ones they do not belong to. It is those societies alone who will determine what it means to be a physician. But what happens if conscience is removed from the moral equation and ceded to a medical society? While there are limits to conscientious objection where there is imminent risk of injury or death, the cleansing from the practice of medicine of persons who have moral objections would harm not only physicians and the medical profession, but most importantly, harm patients. First, the impact of the removal of conscience will be decidedly negative. Physicians will know that they cannot be trusted based on their own moral values, that even their own medical societies don’t trust them. They can be forced to act against their conscience without any evidence than what they were doing is causing anything more than subjective patient disagreement or inconvenience. Stahl and Emmanuel’s argument would claim that health care professionals are to do whatever the bureaucracy of medicine tells them to do as long, as it satisfies the demands of the patients. Physicians must submit to the paternalism of external agents. Second, the limitations on conscience in medicine. While the legal protections are beyond the scope of this paper, there needs to be an ethical evaluation of the conditions for limitations. I will defend Daniel Sulmasy’s view that treatment should be provided in an emergency as defined as imminent risk of actual illness or injury and, if there are objections to what is provided by the objector, it should be evidence based, not anecdotal. Furthermore, the information should be accurate. The physician should not lie nor withhold medically necessary information. However, I will suggest that there may be controversy over what is medically “accurate” and what level of evidence is necessary, especially since “politically correct” treatments such as for gender dysphoria are acceptable at the lowest level of “expert.” The reasons for conscientious objection should also be nondiscriminatory. Care should not be denied based on race, creed or sexual orientation. Finally, alternatives to what the patient is demanding should be offered. Third, the demand to remove conscience from medicine is based on a fundamental change in its ethos. Medicine will no longer be considered a calling but a job where an external bureaucracy determines what is proper or not. Lastly, removing persons who morally object to using their medical knowledge to treat conditions which are not a disease will cause serious harm not only to physicians, but also the medical profession and, most importantly, patients. It will not only prevent the reflective equilibrium which Stahl and Emmanuel so value, but actually cause harm by preventing to correct the mistakes that they admit that medical societies have made in the past.
Ashley Fernandes (Committee Chair)
Courtney Thiele (Advisor)
Ryan Nash (Committee Member)
94 p.
Ethics
conscientious objection, conscientious refusal, civil disobedience, religion, conscience, referral, transfer of care, medicine, ethics, bioethics, values, patient harm

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jones-Nosacek, C. (2020). The Harms of the Cleansing of Conscience Objection on the Practice of Medicine [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu160674338681952

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jones-Nosacek, Cynthia. The Harms of the Cleansing of Conscience Objection on the Practice of Medicine . 2020. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu160674338681952.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jones-Nosacek, Cynthia. "The Harms of the Cleansing of Conscience Objection on the Practice of Medicine ." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu160674338681952

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu160674338681952
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© 2020, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License The Harms of the Cleansing of Conscience Objection on the Practice of Medicine by Cynthia Jones-Nosacek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.