From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Nov 27 2001 - 17:34:39 MST
> > 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'm not saying that their direct motives are to increase suffering; I'm
saying that the _rationally expectable consequences_ of many of their
actions, do, in fact, increase suffering. People should not be judged
by their motives: they should be judged by what a rational person could
predict would be the likely consequences of their actions. I'm sure
some of them occasionally fall upon doing the right thing, like making
sure a patient is fully informed and gives consent. But what I see
most of them doing is putting blocks in the way of people acting with
the unanimous consent of all involved; and a rational person can see
that that can have no positive benefit to anyone.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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