A doctor’s personal values have no place in medicine says ethics expert Julian Savulescu in this week’s British Medical Journal (registration required). Savulescu, of the University of Oxford writes that those who can not offer “legally permitted, efficient, and beneficial care to a patient because it conflicts with their values, should not be doctors.”

He cites two primary examples illustrating the ways in which a doctor’s conscience can interfere with medical care:

- A doctor who refuses to treat people over the age of 70 because he believes that older patients have already lived a good life.

- A medical specialist who refuses to treat those affected by an epidemic of bird flu or another infectious disease because she values her own life more than her duty to treat her patients.

While the argument may seem clear — a doctor’s values do nothing but complicate medical treatment — there is another side. Those who support “conscientious objection” feel that restraining a doctor’s values “harms the doctor and constrains liberty.”

Do you think doctors should allow their values to influence their medical decisions?

[via BMJ]

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