From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Nov 27 2001 - 14:17:23 MST
On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 09:12:13AM -0800, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> Attacking a _profession_ is fair game, because people choose their
> professions, and are therefore rightly judged by those choices.
> A medical ethicist is someone who has willfully chosen as a profession
> to increase death and suffering in the world.
It may be fair game to attack professions, but I find it rather hard to
believe that medical ethicists see as their aim to increase death and
suffering. Yes, you may think they as a profession increase them in the
world (which is also debatable), but making claims about their
individual motivations is rather extreme. Any evidence?
I think we should admit that plenty of people in medical ethics are no
worse than any other academic or philosophically employed person. They
may have prejudices predisposing them towards oldfashioned (to us)
values rejecting what we consider to be the way towards health and life.
Some evidence I have read suggest that their main failing is that many
form an ethical priesthood with little direct connection to research and
medical practice, but there are clear exceptions to this too.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:12:15 MST