Most Important Bottom Line In Medicine Is Healing The Sick Letter Of The Week: From Jan. 2

When I taught in medical school not so many years ago, doctors were guided by the honorable precepts of the Hippocratic oath. St. Luke, the gospel writer and himself a physician, likely also followed it.

The Hippocratic tradition counsels doctors to act for the best interest of the sick. It does not mention the benefit of taxpayers, the insurance companies, the hospital accounting department, the ethics committees nor the state.

The focus of medicine is to heal the sick. Period.

There are costs to treating a baby Ryan. They can, however, be seen as a kind of insurance premium, to see to it that we do not become a society that tosses the unwanted overboard. The myth that some people are of lower quality in life has been responsible for the horrors of genocide, slavery, persecutions and other crimes against humanity. This myth has no place in medicine.

The expenses involved in treating a baby Ryan are small compared to the costs of adopting guidelines that would favor a culture-of-death approach, which would use death as a means for solving the problems in life.

Medicine is not a cold, infallible science. The attitude of the healer toward the patient can make a critical difference in the therapeutic outcome. An initial diagnosis of a terminal condition should not become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

We should therefore, and with hope, err on the side of life by giving the patient a chance. Dr. Greg Maloney, Ph.D. Danville, Wash.

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