- Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery (ret.) and Adjunct Professor of Medical History (ret.), Mercer University School of Medicine; President, www.haciendapub.com, Macon, Georgia, USA
Correspondence Address:
Miguel A. Faria
Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery (ret.) and Adjunct Professor of Medical History (ret.), Mercer University School of Medicine; President, www.haciendapub.com, Macon, Georgia, USA
DOI:10.4103/2152-7806.171253
Copyright: © 2015 Surgical Neurology International This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.How to cite this article: Faria MA. Bioethics – should they encourage the killing of unwanted newborn infants?. Surg Neurol Int 08-Dec-2015;6:184
How to cite this URL: Faria MA. Bioethics – should they encourage the killing of unwanted newborn infants?. Surg Neurol Int 08-Dec-2015;6:184. Available from: http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint_articles/bioethics-should-they-encourage-the-killing-of-unwanted-newborn-infants/
In medicine and surgery, traditional medical ethics have been based on the Oath of Hippocrates that has endured through the centuries because its precepts are patient-oriented, namely that the first consideration of the physician is the need of the individual patient. Doctors are sworn to do no harm and to advise and do what is in the best interest of their patients; third-party payers, insurers, society, and the state are (or should be) secondary considerations.
For several decades, progressive academicians have been pushing for a new term, that is, bioethics.[
Bioethics (and potentially neuroethics) is based on utilitarianism and collectivist, population-based ethics that are susceptible to manipulation by social engineers, and the influence of government monetary and funding considerations.[
Bioethics is not concerned with individual autonomy, natural law, moral principles, or the dignity of human life, as it claims. Instead, its tenets are based on situational ethics, moral relativism, utilitarianism, and what is in the best interest of society or more apropos, the state. Attorney and moral philosopher Wesley Smith has called the bioethics movement “a culture of death” because it supports euthanasia of the elderly and infirm; abortion on demand; physician-assisted suicide; the withholding of food and water for terminally or chronically ill patients, etc.[
As far as the reach of the bioethics movement, I thought I had heard it all with the call for a limit to human life by age 75[
In the landmark article, “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?” – the authors Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, writing from their respective Centres for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at two respected universities in Australia, argue that “having a child can itself be an unbearable burden for the psychological health of the woman or for her already existing children, regardless of the condition of the fetus.”[
Therefore society's answer to the dilemma of unwanted children in the minds of these bioethicists should be the legal killing of the newborns, which they refer to as “after-birth abortions.” The moral justification propounded by these philosophers/bioethicists is that newborns do not have the “moral standing” of persons and the potentiality for the development into persons is “morally irrelevant.”[
We have been sliding down the slippery slope of utilitarian bioethics and moral relativism for some time, but few physicians – if published letters to editors in newspapers or medical journals is any guide – seem to have noticed and objected.[
As I have written elsewhere, Dr. Leo Alexander, an eminent psychiatrist and chief US medical consultant at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials described how German physicians became willing accomplices with the Nazis in ktenology, “the science of killing.” Dr. Alexander wrote that “from small beginnings” the values of an entire society may be subverted, and “it is the first seemingly innocent step away from principle that frequently decides a life of crime. Corrosion begins in microscopic proportions.”[
Many deluded people may think this is a personal freedom. It is not; it is a violation of the natural right to (and the sanctity of) life. Life precedes liberty. Governments have a penchant to arrogate political power to enforce expedient fiscal considerations. What if the state bolstered by political expediency and the fiscal burden of some unwanted babies – just as the old and infirm who are already subject to euthanasia in some countries – decides that newborns with disabilities or even normal babies are not worth the expense?
Are we already too far down the slippery slope of the bioethics movement to stop its utilitarian tenets and moral relativism stemming from the dystopia of academia from permeating into society and in preventing the state from assuming these dangerous prerogatives?
References
1. Blaylock RLLast accessed on 12 July 15. Available from: http://www.haciendapub.com/articles/national-health-insurance-part-ii-anysocial-utility-elderly-russell-l-blaylock-md .
2. Faria MALast accessed on 12 Jul 15. Available from: http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint_articles/the-road-being-paved-toneuroethics-a-path-leading-to-bioethics-or-to-neuroscience-medical-ethics/ .
3. Faria MALast accessed on 12 July 15. Available from: http://www.haciendapub.com/randomnotes/bioethics-%E2%80%94-life-and-death-issue .
4. Faria MALast accessed on 12 July 15. Available from: http://www.surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint_articles/bioethics-and-why-i-hope-to-live-beyond-age-75-attaining-wisdom-a-rebuttal-to-dr-ezekiel-emanuels-75-age-limit/ .
5. Faria MALast accessed on 12 July 15. Available from: http://www.haciendapub.com/medicalsentinel/euthanasia-medical-science-and-road-genocide .
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7. Giubilini AMinerva FLast accessed on 12 Jul 15. doi:10.1136/medethics-2011-100411.
8. Smith WJLast accessed on 12 July 15. Available from: http://www.haciendapub.com/medicalsentinel/bioethics-movement-emerging-culture-death .
9. Wickham EDLast accessed on 12 July 15. Available from: http://www.lifetree.org/newsletter/2010-11-02.html .