Clergy Conference
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 1960 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Dr. L. R. C. Agnew, associate professor of the history of medicine, presented his views on the ethical involvements in medicine at a panel discussion held in conjunction with the Kansas Conference for Clergy last night at the Kansas Union. The conference coincides with Religion in Life Week on the campus. Following are excerpts from the text of his speech:
Agnew Discusses Ethics in Medicine
Since Imhotep's time many ethical matters have arisen which have tended to disturb the doctor's "peace" — for example: euthanasia (mercy-killing), birth control, artificial insemination, and the use of patients as subjects in scientific or medical experiments.
We can't discuss these things just now — suffice it to say that there is one golden thread that the physician can follow safely through these formidable ethical labyrinths — and that thread is a simply stranded one. It is this — that the doctor when confronted with such problems as we have just mentioned should ask himself the following simple question — and answer it honestly — namely:
Let us go back to the first medical man whose name we know — I refer to Imhotep, an Egyptian physician of the Third Dynasty which started around 2600 B.C.
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Is the course I am following — or the treatment I am recommending — the same that I should recommend for one of my immediate family circle — for one of those dearest to me? And if the answer is an unqualified "yes," then the physician is probably doing the best that he truly can. But if the answer is "no," I would submit that he has no moral right to proceed further with his original plan. This simple personal catechism is particularly good for the so-called "scientific physician" in our medical schools.
This simple question would also help the physician to remember what should never be forgotten: that patients are human beings — individual human beings — and should never be regarded as "clinical material" (to use an obnoxious phrase) or guinea-pigs (to use an even more horrible expression). Nil humani a me alienum puto should be the doctor's motto — "nothing human is outside my concern."
And apropos the individuality of patients, it seems to me that we of the medical profession don't utilize you gentlemen as wisely or as often as we should.
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I'm thinking, in this respect, not so much of the general practitioner of medicine, but more of the hospital physician who has a whole ward full — or several wards full — of patients; all too often, I fear, many of these patients are a bit neglected from the religious standpoint. This neglect, when it occurs, is inadvertent I am sure. One way of combating it is to have more intimate intellectual contact between the hospital chaplain, for example, and the medical student.
Finally, I think the profession of medicine is perhaps more moral than any other profession — present company excepted, of course. We have a few black sheep—what profession doesn't? But I am sure we have far fewer than the other professions. We don't advertise our wares in the open market; we are intensely critical of one another; our training is long and arduous; and we have, in common with you gentlemen, appallingly difficult professional problems to resolve each day. But let me halt this catalogue of our virtues to reiterate what I have already stressed — that you need have no fears about the ethics of the medical profession as long as the physician compassionately regards his patients as fellow human beings...
I will practice medicine according to my ability and judgment. I will produce abortion, expedite death, and kill the newly born when it is medically desirable. I will respect the confidence of my patients, and will adhere to society's conventions in my relations with them. If I succeed in these undertakings I expect to be prosperous and respected; if not, to be a failure and (struck off the register) not allowed to practice.
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Here is food — indigestible food — for thought for the future. I would submit that only by education, humanitarian education, of our embryo physicians, (our medical students) — and aided and abetted by you gentlemen where necessary — can such a travesty of the spirit of the great original Oath be averted. In one of the writings attributed to the Hippocratic School it is said (and I am sure you have heard it before) that “where there is love of the man there is also love of the art.” These twin goals — love of the man and love of the art — should be, indeed must be kept before us physicians — presently and in the future — if we are to survive as a noble and honorable profession.
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