Life After Death

'Don't Ask, Don't Care' On 17 January, 1996, in another letter to Dr Linklater, Professor Green insisted, "We have a deliberate policy not to enquire about abortion" ... and, "Students are allowed to opt out, but we warn them that questions about abortion may form part of the examination". Having issued their warning, with all its implications (and apparently in default of the Conscience Clause of the 1967 Act), Manchester then pursues a policy of disinterestedness: "We have no data on whether students are criticised about their views since we make no effort to find out who holds what views". Nor do they appear to have any data about what happens to students who, on conscience grounds, fail to answer questions about the performance of abortion.

If they failed to monitor incidents of racial harassment, imagine the quite proper indignation which would follow! Sir Ian Gainsford, Dean of the School, at King's College, London, told Dr Linklater (13 August, 1996), "We are not at liberty to offer a modified curriculum for any group of students, and all students are expected to clerk-in patients for termination". This too runs contrary to the spirit and letter of the 1967 Act. In practice, as Sir William will be well aware, an undergraduate is powerless to do much about it without destroying their career. In most medical schools there is a deliberate policy of spreading the web of involvement as widely as possible. It is an insidious process of corruption. If everyone appears willing to participate, then not only is dissent temporarily stifled, but the consciences of the deans and heads of department are placated, and assenting students are made to feel more comfortable. In other replies from medical schools to Dr Linklater, it appears that only Leeds, Cambridge, Liverpool and Birmingham offered guarantees to respect conscience among their students.

An Ethical Void Any student hoping to hear the ethical issues aired dispassionately as part of their medical course is likely to be disappointed. Take the question of embryo experimentation. Parrot-like, modern medics repeat the mantra that there is no alternative to conducting experiments on human embryos. They insist that it is the only way to discover cures for disability, but little discussion takes place in the schools about the ethics of carrying out destructive experiments on a human embryo or about the alternatives. The late Professor Jerome Lejeune, a leading French scientist, discovered the chromosomal abnormalities which lead to Downs Syndrome. He declared it entirely unethical and unnecessary to undertake such experiments. Where courses in medical ethics are organised, is there any consideration of Lejeune's work or his ethical outlook? I doubt it. Undergraduates are subjected to the medically-correct equivalent of political correctness and religious correctness. At a recent meeting with medical students, a group told me that they were entirely unprepared to deal with the ethical quandaries which breath-taking technological advances pose. The latest efforts to rewrite the largely abandoned Hippocratic Oath merely serve to underline the seriousness of the situation.