The Cruelest Irony of All - When "Those Who Heal You Will
Kill You"
Medical professionals are losing their purpose and becoming
a danger to everyone
Editorial
By John Jalsevac
LifeSiteNews.com
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The recent terror attacks on the U.K. presented the world
with a cruel irony. Amongst those suspected of
masterminding the series of attacks, that, had they been
successful, could have killed hundreds of civilians and
injured hundreds more, were up to seven respected members
of the medical community -- physicians, or physicians in
training, including a specialist in neurology.
The irony of the situation was brought home most chillingly
in a cryptic threat received some months ago by an Anglican
cleric who was doing ministry in Iraq: "The people who cure
you will kill you." At the time the cleric ignored the
message as just another amongst the countless idle threats
from Muslim extremists that he received on a daily basis,
unaware of just how literal the words were, how real the
threat was.
While the psychology behind using physicians as killers may
be as simple as the psychology of disguise -- i.e. use
those who would least be suspected of such crimes -- there
may be something at work that is still more subtle.
In response to the disturbing revelations about the U.K.
doctors, a recent article in the Toronto Star studied the
issue of physician as killer, pointing out that it is
hardly a new phenomenon. From Nazi doctors who carried out
inhuman experiments on their prisoners, to Jack the Ripper,
who some believe may have been a physician, to serial
killer Harold Shipman, a doctor who allegedly murdered up
to 200 people, physicians have often crossed the line from
healer and comforter to murderer or torturer.
As the psychologist Dr. Robert Jay Lifton points out in The
Star's report, doctors have long been perceived as having
"shamanistic" powers, and for good reason. The knowledge
that physicians have of the human body, of the mechanisms
of life, gives them exceptional power over life. But along
with this power over life comes the opposing power -- of
death.
A very long time ago the Greek physician Hippocrates saw
the inherent dangers that come with the type of knowledge
that the physician acquires. As a consequence he wrote his
famous "Hippocratic Oath," the taking of which was the norm
for the medical community for several millennia.
Hippocrates' oath had physicians solemnly swear to the
following: "To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug
nor give advice which may cause his death," and, "Nor will
I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion."
Presently, however, there is a steady cultural shift in the
medical community away from the understanding of the
physician as healer, towards an acceptance of the physician
also as killer. It may be tempting to immediately think
"abortion," and while that is a true instance of the
disturbing trend at work, the problem is deeper than that,
and is creeping into every nook and cranny of the medical
arts, to their very foundation.
It is no accident that the Hippocratic oath was abandoned
by the medical community in the 1970s -- an act that has
had a devastating effect upon the healthcare professions.
Only yesterday, for instance, LifeSiteNews ran a story
about the fact that two nurses have been charged in Oregon
for performing an assisted suicide, which seems like a
positive story at first glance, at least insofar as the
nurses are being charged. But the story is suffused with
the same cruel irony found in the story of the U.K.
terrorists. For the nurses have come under fire, not
because they killed their patient, but because they killed
their patient without a physician present.
So far has the pendulum swung in Oregon that the state has
codified the role of doctor as killer, legislating that
when someone wishes to kill themselves, they may only do so
with the help of a physician. To do otherwise is a crime.
Death may only come at the hands that were trained to give
life.
Again, today we find the story of the Scottish doctor who
murdered two prematurely born babies by giving them 23
times the normal dose of a certain drug. Reports say that
Dr. Munro will be brought before a fitness to practice
panel, and may lose his medical license. Nothing is said in
The Scotsman report about the possibility of criminal
charges, and meanwhile Munro is arguing that there was
nothing wrong with what he did.
A representative from the General Medical Council said that
Munro realized that what he had done "was outside accepted
professional practice," but he did not believe that it was
"inappropriate."
Stories like these are multiplying, so that hardly a day
goes by when we don't report on a case where someone who
has been trained to save lives, has instead used their
knowledge to prematurely end a life.
The Scotsman report on Dr. Munro goes on to discuss the
"dilemma" of pain and suffering in the practice of
medicine. Essentially the dilemma comes down to the
following question: "What is the definition of 'healing'?"
Here is the root of the problem. After all, if the end of
the medical arts is to heal, then one must have a clear
understanding of what healing means.
In times past this was an easy question for a physician to
answer. The physician was trained to heal the body, and did
so, or failed to do so while trying, and that was the end
of the story. To preserve life was the governing end of the
medical profession. Life was the final good. Of course, it
was also the physician's task to minimize pain and to give
comfort to the patient, but never at the expense of life.
Physicians considered themselves, and were considered by
others, to be part of a sacred vocation, and were treated
with a corresponding respect. But nowadays it seems that
the question about the true nature of healing has been made
much more complicated, if not perverse.
Nowadays it seems that fewer medical professionals
understand or accept exactly what "healing" is. For many
healing is as it traditionally always was -- to take a body
that is damaged and try to repair it, and to minimize pain
and maximize comfort in the process. But for an increasing
number, at certain times to heal is to do the opposite --to
destroy the processes of the body, to kill.
According to this way of thinking, sometimes life is better
than death, and sometimes death is better than life. But
when is one better than the other? This new breed of
physician has conveniently changeable answers to the
question.
Not only is there no official criteria, but increasingly
members of the medical profession are making up looser and
looser criteria, pushing the pendulum away from the old
understanding of life as always superseding death, towards
the notion that often death supersedes life. If you feel
life is better than death, then live; if you feel that
death is better than life, then die.
Another LifeSiteNews story in the works for tomorrow's news
reports how a respected bioethicist published an article in
one of the world's most prestigious (if not the most
prestigious) journal of bioethics, in which the ethicist
argues that the mentally ill should be given the "right" to
end their own lives. But, then, of course, the bothersome
question presents itself: "Who are the mentally ill?"
Sufferers of Downs Syndrome, psychopaths, schizophrenics?
Or what about the depressed, the stupid, the mildly
unhappy?
Absolute standards have been eradicated, and now everything
is up for grabs. We have only begun to see the
consequences. Increasingly there are reports, not only of
doctors assisting in suicides, but of doctors who,
according to their own private standards, have decided that
a patient no longer merits life. Patients have been killed
without their consent, and without the consent of their
families. The result, then, is, "if I feel like you should
live, then live, and if I feel like you should die, then
die."
For how much longer will we be able to trust our own
doctors? When life is no longer the end which the medical
profession serves, then how can we be sure we will be
cured, and not killed by those in whose hands we are the
most vulnerable?
When life becomes only one good being weighed in an
arbitrary balance against numerous other goods, then
medical professionals have lost their purpose, and will
become a danger to everyone. This is precisely the
situation in which physicians are increasingly finding
themselves today. It is time, therefore, for members of the
medical community to recognize the precipitous position in
which their profession is hanging, and to begin to push the
pendulum back to where it once was -- to resurrect the
Hippocratic Oath, to understand that to be a physician is
to serve life, and never death.
See LifeSiteNews' Physician's Oath poster:
http://www.lifesite.net/shop/Physicians_Oath.htm
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Please note also:
"Let diet be your medicine
- Hippocrates
A physician without a knowledge of astrology has no right
to call himself a physician ... There is one common flow,
one common breathing, all things are in sympathy.
- Hippocrates
Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/24fq83
http://www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
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Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
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http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
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