Response II

Abstract

Three of my friendly critics object to my “medical indications policy.” This has somewhat different meanings for each of them, and certainly different roles to play in their chapters, and different degrees of importance. Bartholome, in an essay that appears in the third part of this forum, is the most vigorous in his objection to my use of the predicate “medical.” I hope to show that his dispute with me is largely terminological, or may be. Allen Verhey fears that, leaning against patient autonomy making mechanics of physicians, I “canonize” the physician’s perspective and reduce patients to “the sum total of the physiological processes operative” in them. His deeper theme--more pervasive than that mistake--is an understanding of patient-physician relations as a long drawn-out “story” of collaboration, rather like the resolution proposed by Robert A. Burt in Taking Care of Strangers. Well and good, in an ideal world; in a less than ideal world, however, there is not time for that, without the closer-order moral analysis that has been my meat to chew on. In his somewhat reportorial style, it is John Connery, S.J., who raises the most serious ethical objection to my “medical indications policy.” Anyway, I shall respond to him first.