Ethics

Some days I don’t do exactly what I’m supposed to do. In the past 48 hours, I have decided that I want to pursue medical bioethics research personally and corporately. I want to found a medical ethics collegiate society, but I have to understand the significance and the need of this undertaking. Today I perused free research to try to get a taste of what noise is out there in the bioethics realm.

Three major incidences prompted this recent interest:

1) January of this year I met Terri Schiaivo’s brother Bob in DC. Bob experienced the tragedy of ethics gone awry and watched his sister starve. I cannot forget the despairing tone in his voice when he said, “I really envy you Pro-Lifers because you all have a voice and platform. I don’t see any victory for the end-of-life ethical arena.” Bob Shiaivo, I would love to prove you wrong.

2) As a Physician Assistant 1^st year student, I read for a class current Hippocratic Oaths that medical students recite before beginning their practice. Only 5% of oaths had caveats against euthanasia and abortion. I wasn’t shocked. But I was disappointed.

3) Ryan, a nursing student in one of my class thanked me for sharing so lucidly in a group discussion that my life goal was to speak for human rights in medicine, specifically for preborns both domestically and abroad. Ryan needs more courage as do I. He gives me courage to keep on.

I will write and synthesize into realization what medical bioethics truly is, and where the preborn fits into this.

here's to being human, a glorious and dangerously beautiful thing.