John, Your health care post was a beneficial exercise in considering your approach to pluralism in the context of a free speech protest involving differing views on abortion among physicians. Your thoughtful post highlighted that the differences related to a political difference on abortion, but it was fairly predictable that you would go to abortion and the media covered white coat ceremony protest. As an attorney who has worked in health care policy for decades, I wish that we could get beyond the hot button issues to deliberate on other health care delivery concerns. I have been a Uniform Law Commissioner for 17 years and spent time on their study committee on revising the Uniform Determination of Death Act with respect to brain death. [The topic is now the subject of a drafting committee that I do not serve on.]. In examining issues about the adequacy existing statutory standards of brain death, there is need for a pluralism that allows medical professionals with differing (and conflicting) schools of thought on brain death to deliberate productively with lawyers, disability and family advocates, philosophers and the “pro-life” lobby. An issue like this one is both technical and implicated in our deepest social commitments. Good public policy is probably not well served by politically tinged harangues on issues like brain death. The issues relate to both the substantive definition of brain death and questions surrounding providing a religious exemption. Let me encourage you to consider thinking about options for applying pluralism to concrete deliberations on issues that are not as media sexy as abortion. You have a generous and gifted mind to apply to problems such as these. I understand the first amendment tinged posts, but health care has serious issues that could likewise benefit from disciplined reflection like yours.
It reminds me of a colleague who was attending an event of medical professionals some years back (pre-COVID). One of the speakers at the event expressed his personal struggle with being willing to provide medical care for those with views differing from his own. He said that it would be easier for him to sympathize with and treat a Nazi than to treat a patient who would not vaccinate her children. The crowd of practitioners laughed and applauded (at least in some sympathy with this perspective). It strikes me that we, as a medical community, are failing mightily in our duties to our broader society if we are so unable to relate to those who hold views contrary to our own.
I confess that I suspect I would have to work hard to fulfill the Hippocratic oath in the face of someone who saw the extermination of ethnicities other than their own as both just and inevitable (as the Nazis did). But I have grave concerns for the future of our society if our medical caregivers place the distrust of its recommended prophylaxis (such as childhood vaccination) above the aforementioned moral anathema on its list of evils that may warrant refusal of medical care.
I don't know how we restore the commonality here, but I'd love to hear a plan (and would love to be part of a solution).
(Full disclosure: while I am in the medical community, I am not a doctor of medicine and have not taken the Hippocratic oath.)
I am so glad you wrote about this U of Mich event, John. When I first read about it earlier this week, it tormented my night's sleep. I commend the school administrators for standing firm with the invitation to Dr. Collier, commend her grace in the face of the demonstration. It is important that we extend grace to the protestors as well--in the hope that not canceling the cancellation will just escalate matters. But a sad day.....thanks again for highlighting it. Lots of Assembly Required, methinks.
John, Your health care post was a beneficial exercise in considering your approach to pluralism in the context of a free speech protest involving differing views on abortion among physicians. Your thoughtful post highlighted that the differences related to a political difference on abortion, but it was fairly predictable that you would go to abortion and the media covered white coat ceremony protest. As an attorney who has worked in health care policy for decades, I wish that we could get beyond the hot button issues to deliberate on other health care delivery concerns. I have been a Uniform Law Commissioner for 17 years and spent time on their study committee on revising the Uniform Determination of Death Act with respect to brain death. [The topic is now the subject of a drafting committee that I do not serve on.]. In examining issues about the adequacy existing statutory standards of brain death, there is need for a pluralism that allows medical professionals with differing (and conflicting) schools of thought on brain death to deliberate productively with lawyers, disability and family advocates, philosophers and the “pro-life” lobby. An issue like this one is both technical and implicated in our deepest social commitments. Good public policy is probably not well served by politically tinged harangues on issues like brain death. The issues relate to both the substantive definition of brain death and questions surrounding providing a religious exemption. Let me encourage you to consider thinking about options for applying pluralism to concrete deliberations on issues that are not as media sexy as abortion. You have a generous and gifted mind to apply to problems such as these. I understand the first amendment tinged posts, but health care has serious issues that could likewise benefit from disciplined reflection like yours.
John, great post, as always.
It reminds me of a colleague who was attending an event of medical professionals some years back (pre-COVID). One of the speakers at the event expressed his personal struggle with being willing to provide medical care for those with views differing from his own. He said that it would be easier for him to sympathize with and treat a Nazi than to treat a patient who would not vaccinate her children. The crowd of practitioners laughed and applauded (at least in some sympathy with this perspective). It strikes me that we, as a medical community, are failing mightily in our duties to our broader society if we are so unable to relate to those who hold views contrary to our own.
I confess that I suspect I would have to work hard to fulfill the Hippocratic oath in the face of someone who saw the extermination of ethnicities other than their own as both just and inevitable (as the Nazis did). But I have grave concerns for the future of our society if our medical caregivers place the distrust of its recommended prophylaxis (such as childhood vaccination) above the aforementioned moral anathema on its list of evils that may warrant refusal of medical care.
I don't know how we restore the commonality here, but I'd love to hear a plan (and would love to be part of a solution).
(Full disclosure: while I am in the medical community, I am not a doctor of medicine and have not taken the Hippocratic oath.)
I am so glad you wrote about this U of Mich event, John. When I first read about it earlier this week, it tormented my night's sleep. I commend the school administrators for standing firm with the invitation to Dr. Collier, commend her grace in the face of the demonstration. It is important that we extend grace to the protestors as well--in the hope that not canceling the cancellation will just escalate matters. But a sad day.....thanks again for highlighting it. Lots of Assembly Required, methinks.