The recent proliferation in our medical schools and universities of “departments of medical ethics,” was a sure sign that the medical establishment had decided to redefine and mould medical ethics after its own ideas; and to move away from many centuries of ethics that had always spoken to physicians and nurses with a clear, universal and humane voice.
Thank you for this Francis - everyone should read this!
Indeed, what I experienced in Law school is very similar to what you describe happening in the medical school. The contortions that legal ethicists go through are so convoluted, a person’s mind is simply boggled in the end.
One teaching of modern legal theory is clear, however, since it is stated explicitly and unequivocally: there is no necessary connection between morality and ethics. That means the decision a lawyer must take is not determined by what is right or wrong. I’m not the only person who had trouble warping my mind to accommodate this modern dogma of legal theory propounded at the University of Saskatchewan.
I occasionally relate this experience to people, and I commonly get the sense that people feel it must be correct since that’s what is taught! The practical effect of this modern teaching became amply clear to me however, when I ran into a fellow legal ethics classmate after graduation and asks if he intended to “follow the ethical route”. His apologetic response was that there would be little chance of that since he had landed a job with one of the largest law firms in Calgary.
Today law students are taught the Marxist view that the law is a bludgeon, used by the powerful to keep the powerless in their state of subjugation. Law professors believe they can enlighten law students by encouraging them to wrench this bludgeon from the grasp of the powerful and use it against them on behalf of the disadvantaged. It is thought that it’s ok to do what’s wrong as long as you do it to the right person. Your article reminds us where this type of ethics led Nazi and Soviet doctors, and it explains my fellow student’s response. Believing that being ethical means weaponizing the law against the right people, for him it perhaps could only mean working at a free legal clinic like CLASSIC on 20th Street in Saskatoon. (If the Law is merely a bourgeois weapon, it can only be used to destroy: the ethical course is to destroy power structures such as the church and corporations in the service of the poor and, by extension perhaps, government bureaucracies that supply payments to the poor while undermining churches and small businesses.)
This is the chaos that results from the separation of ethics from morality. At first, it may seem that the young idealistic student is being well armed to function in the “real world”, fighting against power and bringing about “social Justice”. They graduate Law school all fired up to fight evil with evil. But when they face the reality of the need to get a job, all that’s left for them to do is to serve themselves. No commitment to a higher purpose exists. For the Marxist, the law is a contemptible thing. Having denied the true nature of Law as being a revealed Good, their shallow idealism can only give way to an equally shallow “realism”. They are rendered tragically deaf to the one Reality, who writes Truth and Justice on our hearts, guiding us to do what is right and to resile from what is wrong. The Legal industry thus becomes, in a self-fulfilling prophesy, something very close to what the Marxist professors say it is - a swamp of exploiters that we must steer good people away from at all costs - “whatever you do, don’t go to a law firm!”
As with the medical industry, so with the law firms.
All of this only means that we must deepen our commitment to legal, medical and other forms of knowledge and understanding. As G. K. Chesterton put it over a century ago: we must do education better than the schools, we must do medicine better than the hospitals, we must do religion better than the churches, finance better than the banks, and we must do law better than the courts. Looking around today, one reflects that it would be almost impossible to do worse.
Thank you for this moving reminder that ethics comes from the connection of the heart to a higher power, a connection which can guide our heart to be compassionate toward other human beings. Without this intuitive and humble recognition of a higher power, human beings might behave as god-like creatures and seek the illusion of power through medicine, money and many other vehicles, thus corrupting professions that should serve humanity.
Excellent as always Dr. Christian. Relativism is self-refuting and there can be no morality without God. Relativist thinking consumes all aspects of culture, society and meaningful human life like a cancer.
As a nurse in a NICU (in Canada) in the early 70s we had a baby who had been born with a spinal cord so injured during his brith he was born completely paralyzed and had to be intubated immediately and transferred to us. A medical ethicist was consulted who advised we should continue allowing him to live with a tracheotomy etc. I hate to think what would happen today in this situation.....he probably wouldn't have even made it to the NICU!!
Thank you for this Francis - everyone should read this!
Indeed, what I experienced in Law school is very similar to what you describe happening in the medical school. The contortions that legal ethicists go through are so convoluted, a person’s mind is simply boggled in the end.
One teaching of modern legal theory is clear, however, since it is stated explicitly and unequivocally: there is no necessary connection between morality and ethics. That means the decision a lawyer must take is not determined by what is right or wrong. I’m not the only person who had trouble warping my mind to accommodate this modern dogma of legal theory propounded at the University of Saskatchewan.
I occasionally relate this experience to people, and I commonly get the sense that people feel it must be correct since that’s what is taught! The practical effect of this modern teaching became amply clear to me however, when I ran into a fellow legal ethics classmate after graduation and asks if he intended to “follow the ethical route”. His apologetic response was that there would be little chance of that since he had landed a job with one of the largest law firms in Calgary.
Today law students are taught the Marxist view that the law is a bludgeon, used by the powerful to keep the powerless in their state of subjugation. Law professors believe they can enlighten law students by encouraging them to wrench this bludgeon from the grasp of the powerful and use it against them on behalf of the disadvantaged. It is thought that it’s ok to do what’s wrong as long as you do it to the right person. Your article reminds us where this type of ethics led Nazi and Soviet doctors, and it explains my fellow student’s response. Believing that being ethical means weaponizing the law against the right people, for him it perhaps could only mean working at a free legal clinic like CLASSIC on 20th Street in Saskatoon. (If the Law is merely a bourgeois weapon, it can only be used to destroy: the ethical course is to destroy power structures such as the church and corporations in the service of the poor and, by extension perhaps, government bureaucracies that supply payments to the poor while undermining churches and small businesses.)
This is the chaos that results from the separation of ethics from morality. At first, it may seem that the young idealistic student is being well armed to function in the “real world”, fighting against power and bringing about “social Justice”. They graduate Law school all fired up to fight evil with evil. But when they face the reality of the need to get a job, all that’s left for them to do is to serve themselves. No commitment to a higher purpose exists. For the Marxist, the law is a contemptible thing. Having denied the true nature of Law as being a revealed Good, their shallow idealism can only give way to an equally shallow “realism”. They are rendered tragically deaf to the one Reality, who writes Truth and Justice on our hearts, guiding us to do what is right and to resile from what is wrong. The Legal industry thus becomes, in a self-fulfilling prophesy, something very close to what the Marxist professors say it is - a swamp of exploiters that we must steer good people away from at all costs - “whatever you do, don’t go to a law firm!”
As with the medical industry, so with the law firms.
All of this only means that we must deepen our commitment to legal, medical and other forms of knowledge and understanding. As G. K. Chesterton put it over a century ago: we must do education better than the schools, we must do medicine better than the hospitals, we must do religion better than the churches, finance better than the banks, and we must do law better than the courts. Looking around today, one reflects that it would be almost impossible to do worse.
Thank you for this moving reminder that ethics comes from the connection of the heart to a higher power, a connection which can guide our heart to be compassionate toward other human beings. Without this intuitive and humble recognition of a higher power, human beings might behave as god-like creatures and seek the illusion of power through medicine, money and many other vehicles, thus corrupting professions that should serve humanity.
Excellent - my hope would be every citizen could read this article to further understand how far our society has declined
Excellent as always Dr. Christian. Relativism is self-refuting and there can be no morality without God. Relativist thinking consumes all aspects of culture, society and meaningful human life like a cancer.
Michael Classen
As a nurse in a NICU (in Canada) in the early 70s we had a baby who had been born with a spinal cord so injured during his brith he was born completely paralyzed and had to be intubated immediately and transferred to us. A medical ethicist was consulted who advised we should continue allowing him to live with a tracheotomy etc. I hate to think what would happen today in this situation.....he probably wouldn't have even made it to the NICU!!