Senate hearings have commenced into the two Bills based on the recommendations on the Lockhart Inquiry. Talk-back radio phonelines have gone crazy over the admission by Bishop Anthony Fischer that Catholic hospitals would not provide patients with any cures that were discovered through research on embryos.
I think he should be congratulated on his consistent, principled stand. Despite the claims, I do not think that religious people should be prevented from speaking their minds. However, people need to think carefully about whether or not this principled stand really does reflect community standards.
Bishop Fischer is a lovely man who appears to be genuinely willing to live according to his principles. The question is: are we – as members of a liberal, secular society – willing to have these principles imposed on all of us?
Update: here’s an article from today’s Age on the issue.
Speaking one’s mind is one thing. Living according to one’s views is another. If public funds are going into this, however, then they have to roll to community standards as made known through available research.
I will not, as a taxpayer, pay for this kind of religious crap.
I assume that since he likely also is anti-evolution and pro creation that he will also take a stand against using modern antibiotics, sticking only to penicillin.
The problem he might not be willing to admit is that the reason that some bugs are not affected by penicillin is because they have…shock…horror…evolved.
Interesting brain explosion, Steve, but – unfortunately for you – the Catholic Church doesn’t believe in creationism.
If people don’t like the Fischer Declaration, they can go to another hospital. If the argument is that public monies are involved, let the state and the tax-paying public contemplate what would happen to health care in Australia if the Church exited the scene. The Church does the community a favour through its hospital apostolate; the state is not a munificent donor propping up the Church’s medical work with some kind of moral right to dictate bio-ethical policy.
Steve, he is a Catholic bishop. If you are saying that the Roman Catholic Church does not accept the Theory of Evolution then that will come as news to the Pope. They taught it in the Catholic school I went to forty years ago.
I was under the impression that it was up to a patient’s doctor to decide what treatment is appropriate, not their Cardinal.
not being catholic i have no idea…isn’t the bible..err..umm…”the bible”?
They should not be called hospitals. It would be misleading to use that term when the expectation of treatment in a hospital is that the sole concern is the health of patients, not treating a society’s spiritual health. The institutions for that are called churchs. Therefore the institutions in question should be called ‘medical churches’.
oh, and yes, that means that my contributions to private health insurance can not be used to subsidise someone else’s religious practice. I would ask my private health coverer to stop paying for spiritual operations at the medical church. Thankyou very much. If the catholics want to participate in this nonsense, then they can pay for their own religio-medical stupidities.
You stare at your dying child.
You know the child will live if only..
.. you will let the doctor use that procedure.
It’s a classic moral dilemma, which gets around rather like that canard about torturing the Muslim to find out where he put the ticking bomb.
Only thing is, this problem does already happen to religious groups who don’t accept blood transfusions, and more and more procedures will rely on research or tissue from embryos.
Catholics aren’t biblical literalists, steve.
“The question is: are we – as members of a liberal, secular society – willing to have these principles imposed on all of us?”
Sure, why not? I’m happy to think whatever JHo, Piers, Andrew, Janet, Gerard, Miranda, Tony, Mrs Shanahan, Mr Shanahan, and Alan tell me.
SkeptikLawyer:
I see your point. And not much further down that track is Australia’s notorious system of Corporate Welfare where hard-working taxpayers make involuntary gifts to a bunch of tax dodgers, tarrif bludgers, licenced swindlers and other assorted crooks.
Zarquon:
Would this then cause a Demarkation Dispute?
Everyone:
[and partly in response to David Tiley] I’m sure the bishop is a sincere and devout man but hasn’t he failed a basic and important question of conduct for Christians ….. What would the loving and compassionate Jesus Christ do in this situation? (Since Moslems accept Jesus Christ as their prophet Isa, they are not exempt from this moral question either).
Five questions:
1. What, precisely, is a “Catholic hospital”?
2. How much in public funding do these “Catholic hospitals” receive?
3. If a procedure is legal and indicated as the best for the patient in a “non-Catholic hospital”, how does the management of the “Catholic hospital” defend itself against a charge of medical negligence when it refuses to offer the best available treatment to its patients?
4. Is it prudent for governments to continue to fund hospitals that deliberately refuse to provide the best available treatment for patients? Would governments continue to fund bus companies with a conscientious objection to checking the brakes on their vehicles?
5. How long would “Catholic hospitals” survive without government funding?
What happens right now if a woman in a Catholic hospital needs an abortion for unambiguously serious medical reasons, say an ectopic pregancy? Do they make an exception to the “no abortions” rule under those circumstances?
Mark, as for the Catholic church and creationism, didn’t you see the columns in the National Catholic Reporter about Benedict spending time shooting the breeze with creationists?
Robert,
Ectopic pregnancy, and similar situations, are covered by “double effect”. If allowing the pregnancy to continue would kill the mother and thereby kill the embryo, you operate.
Robert, I can’t remember the drill but there’s something about how JP2 said you had to distinguish between accepting evolution and an “ideology” derived from evolution. This tends to lead to a slippage towards some sort of ID with evolution position. If that makes sense – of course, it doesn’t really!
Religion’s have long traditions of allowing their children to die for the sake of principle.
What a terrible curse religion is on our world.
For the abuse and neglect of children on “principle”, nothing in history comes close to the atheist regimes of the twentieth century.
I bet dollars to doughnuts, there aint a cold spoon to be found in a Catholic hospital.The Surgeon who has just removed a terminal tumour can also give you the last rites.Catholics they think of everything.
Can both of you refrain from a “debate” about who’s killed the most people, please?
there are plenty of hospitals around.
If you don’t like the hospitals run by the Catholic denomination then go to another private hospital.
But BBEP,
Your “solution” doesn’t:
1. address the issue of negligence. Could you imagine, for example, a Christian Science hospital that demands the right not to give blood transfusions?
2. address the issue of public funding. As a taxpayer I also have a conscientious objection to my money being spent on health care that denies freedom of legal choice to patience.
If “Catholic hospitals” (whatever they are, I still haven’t seen an adequate definition of such an institution) want to opt out altogether from public funcing, and as long as they are prepared to carry the risk of being sued for medical malpractice, that is their lookout, and good luck to them.
(err, patience = patients. I’m having problems with homophones.)
This is a non-problem.
If you have a problem then you are referred to a specialist.
That specialist is not going to operate in a hospital where he cannot do the operation he wants to.
I might add some patients might like to know if embryonic stem cells were used as well.
Except that some of these procedures may be time-dependent. If “Catholic hospitals” deal themselves out, this automatically lengthens waiting lists elsewhere. Thus the principle of the right of equal access to medical care is not a hypothetical, but a real problem.
Katz,
Queues are in public hospitals because of the insane medicare policy which people do not pay.
Catholic hospitals are in the private sector which do not have queues because people must pay for them.
Public hospitals will perform the procedures banned by Catholic authorities. This must result in a reallocation of resources and a crowding out of patients.
Public hospital queues would hve to lengthen were any private hospital to ban any procedure for whatever reason.
The only way to avoid this is to spend more money. Thus we see an inefficient allocation of funds.
we are talking about specialists here Katz.
They do not work in places where they cannot work!
I take it that BBEP lives in a capital city that has a surfeit of hospitals that is unusual by Australian standards?
Apart from that, Cl wrote:
“If the argument is that public monies are involved, let the state and the tax-paying public contemplate what would happen to health care in Australia if the Church exited the scene.”
What’s the problem? I would happily pay a larger Medicare Levy in order to keep Medicare healthy. I already do pay a surcharge, but since that goes to subsidise somebody else’s private health insurance, that is effectively a compulsory adoption of a Rich Ausralian, and is an immoral imposition that I would trade in for more support of Medicare any day.
Public healthcare should not be dependent on any religious group, and should not be vulnerable to that group forcing its beliefs on non-believers.
BBEP, you last comment is not responsive to the question of crowding out of facilities.
Specialists also operate in public hospitals. They compete for access to scarce theatre space and scarce resources of other kinds. If “Catholic hospitals” deal themselves out of supplying their resources for some procedures, these procedures have to take place elsewhere, including other private hospitals and public hospitals.
Katz, specialists operate out of various hospitals.
If they cannot do it at one they do it at another.
If the person on medicare the issue disappears since Catholic hospitals are not part of the public hospital system.
your objection is irrelevant!
No, BBEP, the person on private health care who might have had the procedure done at a “Catholic hospital” is now part of the pool of patients who now competes for access to fewer operating theatres, etc.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that privately insured patients don’t attend public hospitals. They do. Now there will be more of them. Queues had to lengthen.
Katz,
you seem to be under the missaprehension that specialists treat their private patients the same as public patients.
They do not.
They are seperate.
I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but here’s an article from today’s Age on the issue.
BBEP, how does the fact that specialists treat different categories of patients differently ensure the queues at the reduced number of hospitals willing to allow certain procedures won’t grow longer after some hospitals have banned that procedure?
Imagine a system with two hospitals, X private and Y public.
Scenario 1: privately insured patients only attend X. Public and private attend Y. resources are allocated roughly according to ability to pay. Y has a queue consisting mainly of medicare only patients.
Scenario 2: X bans certain procedures. Smaller number of privately insured patients attend X. Residuum and most others attend Y. Some private patients at Y transfer to X. The rest cannot because absence of specialised facilities at X. Result: longer queues.
Katz,
specialists operate from a variety of hospitals.
If he can’t do something at one he will do it at another.
patients merely go to the hosptial where it can be done within the time allocated.
Private and public patients do not get mixed up. they are different markets completely.
Oh my God, Homer.
The specialists have fewer theatres to choose from. However, because the Medicare people can’t use the private theatres that are now not being used by as many private patients, the demand for the other theatres increases, rather than just getting shifted around.
Thanks Anna. For a while there I thought I must have been speaking in tongues.
(Hmmm. Maybe that would have helped.)
Anna,Katz,
you obviously have not engaged with a specialist at all.
I have two who are related on my wife’s side.
Public patients and private patients are seperate.
They do not get in the way of each other.
If one private hospital doesn’t do something another does.
Then patientx goes to hospital y and patient y goes to Hospital x.
Get it.Good
Presumably a “catholic hospital” is one like the Mater in Brisbane or St Vincents in Sydney.
The issue is that these are both major hospitals and that many would regard them as being in the public system rather than private system. In Sydney or Brisbane there are probably other alternatives. In regional areas maybe not. But I, perhaps naively, assume that stem cell cures might only be delivered in specialist hospitals anyway.
Interestingly St Vincents appears to offer a service called “Blood Stem Cell Transplantation”. Got no idea what that is but – hmmm interesting.
I would never have called you homophonic.
Anna’s post makes many uses of the term “principles,” but what are these?
His stand may be consistent, but it is unprincipled. Therefore he should not be congratulated, but condemned.
Principled religious people should not be prevented from speaking their minds, but unprincipled religious people may need to be stopped.
You have reiterated that his stand is principled. That doesn’t cut it with the rest of us principled folk.
Principles, shminciples. (I always wanted to say that.)
The principle is: If stem cell research saves lives or makes sick people well, it would be highly immoral or unprincipled to stop it.
So what? Who cares how lovely he is. That doesn’t excuse his unprincipled stand.
Having a religious stand is not the same as having principles. Will you please stop using the term “principles”.
Why do Catholics prefer treatment at Catholic hospotals? What does a sick person get at a Catholic hospital that he or she wouldn’t get at a public hospital? Are there crosses and pictures of Jesus on the walls?
That’s not how it works in the public hospitals I’ve worked in, Homer. The private patients may be in private rooms on the wards rather than out in the shared bays, but they are operated on in exactly the same operating theatres as the public patients. There is also only one ICU ward and one CCU ward, and both private and public patients are in it.
I haven’t worked at Sydney’s St Vincents Public Hospital since I was a student, which was before they built the Private Hospital next door, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the two hospitals share one suite of operating theatres to maximise economies of scale (they certainly have connecting walkways for the convenience of the specialists and administrators).
So yes, if all of a sudden there’s private patients who can’t get certain operations at private hospitals run by religious organsiations, then some proportion at least of those patients will be operated on by their private specialists in operating theatres in public hospitals, thus increasing the waiting lists.
Silkworm, just because someone has come to a different conclusion to you on whether something is right or wrong doesn’t make them unprincipled.
I too disagree with the religious base that informs the Bishop’s principles. That doesn’t mean his stand is not a principled one.
Fisher said:
So, his/the church’s position is that the blastocyst is a “unique human being”. Is he/the church saying that the blastocyst (the embryo without even the beginnings of a nervous system) has a soul, or has the church abandoned the doctrine of the soul?
What exactly is a “human being”? Is he/the church trying to conjure up an image of a tiny baby with a human face? Sorry, but these are weasel words, and that makes for bad theology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_words
Fisher’s description was not poor but honest. It was dishonest. That’s Catholic politics for you.
tigtog,
That is because the operating theatres have a private patient time and a public patient time.
If you worked there then you would know that.
Rubbish, BBEP. The theatres are booked in blocs according to the surgeon, not the financial status of the patient.
Surgeon A has Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons.
Surgeon B only does Monday afternoons.
Surgeon C does Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon
etc etc.
Surgeons will always book the private patients in to theatre first and the public patients last in their sessions. This means that when the inevitable ration of emergencies bump in ahead of more chronic conditions, they are more likely to delay the public patients than the private patients, thus the private queue moves through sooner than the public queue. The same for operations which turn out to be more complicated and longer than expected – they are more likely to lead to public than private patients being told “sorry, can’t do you today after all”, because the public patients are deliberately placed at the end of operating sessions.
The more private patients can’t be seen to in purely private facilities, the more their numbers will add to the delays of those on the public waiting list.
Here in Canberra, the Little Sisters of Mary have just bought John James hospital. They now own both private hospitals in Canberra. They have announced that the current in-vitro fertilisation program will be stopped forthwith.
The only public hospital in Canberra is impossibly overstretched – it has the longest waiting times of any major hospital in the country. There is no way it will be offering such a program.
Homer, this means couples who can’t conceive naturally have to go to Sydeny twice a week while they’re on the program – and this in the nation’s capital. These couples will now pay the price of other people’s superstitions, superstitions supported by taxpayer subsidy and by tax exemptions. I think it stinks.
Mark, WRT what Benedict has been up to, see here. I find it disturbing that the Pope appears to be so ill-informed about what the scientific consensus on such basic topics is.
I didn’t use that word nearly as many times as you did. But I’ll try do so now, on the principle that it would be wrong to leave you out there sounding ridiculous on your own. Because I’m principled too. We’re all principled here.
For someone who’s so keen on reason and intelligence, sometimes, silkworm, your comments demonstrate neither.
Those opposed to embryonic stem cell research are opposed on the grounds that the organism being destroyed is a person. Therefore they cannot, in all conscience, argue that it is wrong to kill one person to save another, then do that very thing in their hospitals.
Anyone who honestly believes it’s a person, with full human rights, but then argues that…well, if it saves lives… they, sir, are the unprincipled ones.
Anyone who does believe that hESC research is morally OK believes one of two things: that it isn’t really a person, and while valuable, does not have a “right to life”; or that others’ human rights are secondary to their desire to live.
I continue to commend Bishop Fischer. However, I believe that the community needs to decide whether they share a moral code that gives embryos full human rights, and says that IVF is immoral.
tigtog pwned bbep.