For Your Consideration: An Ethical Dilemma in the Wake of Katrina
How pervasive is moral and ethical relativism on our society? In what ways are ethics related to the situation in which we find ourselves? Are there gray areas in which dire circumstances dictate a suspension of our traditionally held ethical standards? Perhaps a test is in order. Let’s take, for example a situation that resulted from hurricane Katrina. According to a story in the Daily Mail, a UK newspaper, doctors reportedly administered high doses of morphine to some of their patients considered terminal when they found themselves unable to adequately care for them:
So, what do you think? Was what this doctor and others like her did the ethical and right thing to do? Was there a clear right thing that could be done? I am most interested in hearing your perspective.
HT: WorldMagBlog
Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal [sic]. With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive. In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.Assuming this story is accurate (and, except that a few people have heard a similar report on Fox News, I cannot verify otherwise), this introduces quite an ethical dilemma, does it not? After all, these are doctors who are charged with the care of their patients, finding themselves not wanting to end their patient’s lives, but unable to provide the needed care and apparently faced with life or death decisions:
The doctor said: "I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right. "I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony. If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul."We are living in an ethically-challenged culture in which decisions like this are becoming more and more gray and it is necessary for us to have a well-developed worldview in which we can determine what the right thing is and be able to convey on what we base those judgments. This, of course, does not mean there is necessarily a quick and easy fix. I think that all of the factors surrounding the circumstances must be taken into consideration. Once that is done, though, is there a clear and correct response?
The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, said: "This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end.
So, what do you think? Was what this doctor and others like her did the ethical and right thing to do? Was there a clear right thing that could be done? I am most interested in hearing your perspective.
HT: WorldMagBlog
Labels: David C. Price
posted by DAVID C. PRICE at 9/13/2005 01:00:00 PM
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2 Comments:
while I would not agree with the doctors taking a life, in much the same way that I do not agree with other active participation of another person's death (whether it is participation in war or the killing of an intruder, and many other instances), I would see the doctor in the same light as I see a participant in war or another such activity (of course you will disagree with me vehemtly on this subject).
I would tend to look at this pastoral instead of philosophical.
I would never preach to a warrior of the wrongness of his actions in the circumstances involved. I would comfort him when he comes to realize what he has done. I would do the same thing for someone who had killed someone when they think they are doing the right thing, no matter the circumstance.
I can appreciate the Doctor's decision in light of the circumstances. It reminds me of US medics in WWII and Vietnam who did similar things to save their comrades from the horrors or a slower death at the hand of Viet-Cong, Axis members or the environment surrounding them in their last moments.
I think God will have mercy upon this Doctor's sould for his decision and the sadness that grips his soul.
There is no easy answer to such a case. Thank God for imperfect examples of people struggling with right and wrong in scripture. And God using their decisions for his glory, even when they were ethically wrong (thinking Rahab and assorted other usually OT references).
I definately don't think there's an easy answer but I do think there's a Bibilcal one. Biblical answers are rarely easy.
The Biblical answer is that God says 'thou shalt not murder'. Arguments can be made (and I think validly so) that killing in battle is not murder. However, none of those arguments would apply here. The ones killed were not enemy combatants.
These doctors decided they were the ones who got to decide when a persons suffering and even their life ended. That's not man's perogative. Having read this story in an on-line British newspaper, I also recall the doctors talking about threats to their own safety as a consideration and not just the comfort level of the patients.
In short, the doctors usurped God's role and that's always wrong. Can they be forgiven, of course. Paul himself was a murderer. However, we cannot sugar coat what was done or paint it as some kind of unsolvable dilemma in order to spare their feelings.
The answer, the hard answer, is that they stay with the patients until they pass on providing as much comfort and care as they can to the end, even at the risk of personal harm to themselves.
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