“Traditional” medicine is under attack on many inter-related fronts perhaps broadly represented in summary by these specific front lines.
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE IN MEDICINEThe exercise of conscience is foundational to good medicine. It underlies every aspect of good medical practice, to make good patient care our first concern and to practice medicine safely and effectively.
conscienceinmedicine.net.au:
Liberty of conscience lies at the very heart of our integrity. It is conscience that must compel doctors to refuse to participate in treatments they believe to be un-ethical or that they consider not to be in the best interests of patients.
But this is at risk even from within the profession “If people are not prepared to offer legally permitted, efficient, and beneficial care to a patient because it conflicts with their values, they should not be doctors”. Professor Julian Savulescu, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, BMJ 2006;332:294-297 February 4.
For further discussion including doctors not being able to access training places in various disciplines
See Article “Liberty of Conscience” :
Truly informed consent is being suppressed by those of particular ideology, particularly with respect to abortion – the mounting evidence for the breast cancer connection, Post-Abortion Syndrome and pre-term birth cannot be so easily dismissed. Our liberty to tell truth is at risk.
DOCTORS AS “PROVIDERS OF MEDICAL SERVICES”Turning doctors into mere service providers of medical services on demand instead of doctors with conscience, with the traditional doctor/patient relationship being replaced by a service-provider/consumer contract, providing all that is legal whether or not it is consistent with their ethical base.
To sacrifice conscience and be concerned only with service provision is to destroy the heart and soul of medicine.
See Article “Notre Dame Law and Ethics” For fuller discussion:
Governments may legislate to permit certain practices or procedures but governments must never force doctors to violate their conscience by compulsory engagement in such practices or procedures – as indeed has happened with Section 8 of the Victorian 2008 legalisation of abortion compelling doctors to refer to another doctor for abortion.
The Independence of the medical profession is critical – belief in practice as enshrined in UDHR and ICCPR and non-derogable, that cannot be overridden even in national emergency (article 4 ICCPR).
When legal code supersedes moral code, the slope of a culture’s decline is steep and swift. J. Scott Ries, MD
Medical codes of conduct must never be subject to degradation by government.
See Article “Permission becomes Compulsion“:
Human life has intrinsic value and worth in all states of dependence and disability from conception to life’s natural end, the need for the definition being highlighted by
See article “Did Granny jump, or was she pushed? Euthanasia is a threshold too far.“ : by Dr David van Gend of 7 July
And now, astonishingly and unexpectedly, the MBA with its threatened clamping down (Draft Code 2018) of free speech by doctors and with Good Medical Practice being subject to “cultural beliefs” and transgender and identity ideology. These changes would add penalty to perceived breaches relating to any of the above threats to the future of medicine and free debate or expression of views on these threats. Is the MBA itself now into unprofessional conduct in the sense of sabotaging Good Medicine? At least now it has reversed its policy to list complaints against doctors even when the complaints have been found to be without substance. Watch this space.
TRANSGENDER IDEOLOGY AND CHILD ABUSEThe mutual exclusivity of the two “affirming” pathways of approach to the young child wishing to transgender i.e. affirming and reassuring of birth sex vs affirming of feeling sex, and only one of them can be child abuse as declared.
This is highlighted by – also possibly in contravention of international codes regarding human experimentation – the willingness of doctors to use treatments with known and unknown deleterious long-term effects e.g. the use of hormones or even radical disfiguring surgery to amputate normal breasts or genitalia. (Further highlighted by reports in USA: See article “American Doctors Are Performing Mastectomies on Perfectly Healthy 13-Year-Old Girls”
The transgender argument is gaining momentum in the medical community as illustrated by the inclusion in the Medical Journal of Australia 6 August 2018 Volume 209 No 3 of the Consensus Statement by the Australian and New Zealand Professional association for Transgender Health that states “practices attempting to change a person’s gender identity to be more aligned with their sex assigned at birth… lack efficacy, are considered unethical, and may cause lasting damage…”.
This is a clear ethical divide in which it is essential for medicine, not activists, to be decisive and authoritative.
Good Medicine is the heart and soul of Good Medical Practice. It requires and demands skill, knowledge, sensitivity, respect for people and their backgrounds to ensure good health outcomes. It involves understanding, assessing what is happening and what is needed, education and explanation, and working respectfully with the patient to ensure the best possible good health outcome.
The future of medicine is at stake. When Medicine falls, so does society.
Lachlan Dunjey 15 Sept 2018.
Original Source: chooselifeaustralia.org.au