In medicine, the morally unthinkable too easily comes to seem normal
Before you decide to speak out about wrongdoing, you have to recognise it for what it is
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Many of the most egregious ethical abuses in recent decades have taken place in medical centres with prominent bioethics programmes.
PHOTO: PIXABAY
Carl Elliott
Here is the way I remember it: The year is 1985, and a few medical students are gathered around an operating table where an anaesthetised woman has been prepared for surgery. The attending physician, a gynaecologist, asks the group: “Has everyone felt a cervix? Here’s your chance.” One after another, we take turns inserting two gloved fingers into the unconscious woman’s vagina.
Had the woman consented to a pelvic exam? Did she understand that when the lights went dim she would be treated like a clinical practice dummy, her genitalia palpated by a succession of untrained hands? I don’t know. Like most medical students, I just did as I was told.
