3
standards, as well as the questions, "What are my ethical boundaries?" and "How have
my faith, life history, and values shaped those boundaries?"
The Roles of Religious Thought, Scripture, and Theology
Jim Drane offers a discussion of the history standing behind modern medical
ethics and makes an impassioned appeal for the preservation of its religious roots (1997,
4-5):
The public ethical tradition of health care professionals is a long, rich one.
It goes back to the beginning of western medicine (circa 500 BC, e.g., the
Hippocratic Oath), and it has been enriched over the years by religious
beliefs and by heroic practitioners.... If health care ethics is made to
undergo a `religious cleansing,' it will be denatured and left as a vacuous
shell. The long standing philosophical and religious beliefs which have
influenced professional ethical standards must be looked at critically in
our contemporary secular culture, but ethical stories, rules, practices, and
guidelines cannot be eliminated simply because they have their roots in
more religious times.
Among the major religious contributions to medical ethics is the distinction
between ordinary and extraordinary treatments, later replaced by the terms proportionate
and disproportionate (Idziak 2000, 241-42; Drane 1997, 15). In other words, although a
patient is not obliged to do everything possible to preserve life, he or she can be expected
to allow what is not excessively burdensome. Further, the classic principles of autonomy,
beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice, the so-called "Georgetown mantra," appear to
rise naturally out of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
1
We should certainly note the diversity
1
Contra Cohen, who suggests that the principle of distributive justice as a "supposedly moral and rational
basis by which the structure of corporate socialized medicine is being strengthened...is neither a biblical
nor theological principle" (Merrill Cohen, "Is the Bioethical Principle of Distributive Justice Biblical?" A
paper presented to the Evangelical Theological Society, March 31, 2001, 11). But any discussion of the
principle of distributive justice must interact with the issues of "medical futility," including resource waste,