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Recently I started to think about the Health Industry and its ever-more complex nature. No more are the days where 'doctor knows best.' Living in a country where the National Health Service spirals further into debt every day and the media flashes stories of interaction with the law, I felt it was something that needed a good dose of research.
Do we think ourselves more advanced than the men and women of one hundred years ago? What is it that compells us to question every standing decision if not a feeling that we deserve more than the simple right and wrong? I am no ethicist, yet I think that it is best to follow a guideline of principles to follow in difficult cases. I'm not saying that there can be absolutely no room for leniancy and exception, for in rare cases there should be rules produced that better fashion the individual case. However, if we expect the rules to change for every one of us, do we leave the Medical Industry and all its committed staff time and passion to deliver quality? Do we not risk compromising the service we pay to receive?
In having said that, I propose I am a blend of consequentialism (the belief that an act which produces more good than bad is ethically right) and deontology (the belief that some things are never right, however much good may be produced as a result) in that I think stricter lines need to be drawn. Much like how I feel the law protects criminals more than the victims of the crime, I feel we are disregarding the pressures we are exerting on our health specialists by demanding and complicating cases. We are all human beings, and our decisions are unique and deserve respect. If, for example, a doctor were to discover one of his patients was HIV positive, and then that the patient was refusing to tell his partner, what should that doctor do? Either the doctor tells the partner, avoiding the enormous harm that she could suffer if she were to become infected, or the doctor respects his patient's confidentiality and remains quiet.
If the roles are then reversed, should the health service function to the advice of the doctor or the wishes of the patient? Respect for Autonomy is crucial to Human Rights - it is the right patients conserve to make their own decisions over what treatment they should receive. It is never permissable for a doctor to give treatment to a patient who does not want it, unless the patient is incompetent. I agree with this principle, but it is too open-ended and easy to loop. There is always a good chance that this respect for autonomy will see patients demanding the treatment they want, to which they do not have a right. They have the right to refuse but not to demand. We are not economically built to fund such a system.
More and more, the image of a very spoilt average patient emerges. Perhaps the luxuries of this day and age, spanning across other sectors of government such as Housing and Education, are creating a nation of people who expect to be given exactly what they want. This could even extend as far as patients disregarding the burden their selfish decision will impose on their families or carers. I beg to ask whether it should be highlighted that patients have responsibilities as well as rights.
Again, we should start to tighten the grip on justice. I do believe that only on a truly basic level, patients should be treated equally and fairly. Of course, I, as I hope the majority of adults would agree, would rather a child at the beginning of his or her life receive life-saving treatment than someone nearing the end of their life. Of course, ideally you would be able to save both. What I dislike strongly, however, is when the health service provides expensive treatment for patients suffering some self-inflicted conditions. A second liver, a second chance. But, after that, if a man continues to drink, the problem is not with his liver but with his self-motivation and mind. Even if he can pay, we should not give him the treatment out of principle and example. If we are ever going to live in a more respectful society, where the boundaries are clear-cut and defined, we need to cut these loose ends.
Perhaps we should become a society of virtue ethics - doing the right thing for the right reasons. We cannot have our system spotted with patients who want to abort births to avoid spoiling their holiday plans. We have to encourage, and if not encourage, drum responsibility into patients, so that we can all start behaving in a virtuous way. Health is a serious matter.
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