I think it’s interesting how “ethics committees” are implicated in the harm of bureaucratic obstruction of medical progress. From what I understand, medical ethics really does consider a variety of tough and sometimes subtle ethical quandaries. The problem though is genuine risk assessment is treated with great suspicion.
For example, one is not allowed to buy and trade human organs even though that approach probably would save more lives than the current “waiting list” approach (and certainly is worth trying on some scale).
Medical professions are expected to have certain moral attitudes (eg, the Hippocrates Oath), even though, for the most part they don’t. For example, the general attitude towards medical error and work environment (particularly adequate sleep among the employees) is pretty negligent.
Finally, there is a near blindness to opportunity cost. A lot of choices are made to preserve a hypothetical moral environment among medical professionals. Going back to the human organ market example, by not being able to buy and sell human organs, medical professionals are much less tempted to act in an undesirable way. But that doesn’t help your patients. There are costs which are ignored.
I think it’s interesting how “ethics committees” are implicated in the harm of bureaucratic obstruction of medical progress. From what I understand, medical ethics really does consider a variety of tough and sometimes subtle ethical quandaries. The problem though is genuine risk assessment is treated with great suspicion.
For example, one is not allowed to buy and trade human organs even though that approach probably would save more lives than the current “waiting list” approach (and certainly is worth trying on some scale).
Medical professions are expected to have certain moral attitudes (eg, the Hippocrates Oath), even though, for the most part they don’t. For example, the general attitude towards medical error and work environment (particularly adequate sleep among the employees) is pretty negligent.
Finally, there is a near blindness to opportunity cost. A lot of choices are made to preserve a hypothetical moral environment among medical professionals. Going back to the human organ market example, by not being able to buy and sell human organs, medical professionals are much less tempted to act in an undesirable way. But that doesn’t help your patients. There are costs which are ignored.