Published
on the Italian daily "Libero" on February 22, 2001, page 1. Translated with the
permission of the author.
"I swear to pursue the defence
of life, the protection of the physical and psychic health of man, and the relief of
suffering. To those ends, I will inspire my every professional act with responsibility and
constant scientific, cultural and social commitment. I swear to never deliberately commit
acts that cause the death of a patient. I swear to abide by the ethical principles of
human solidarity in all aspects of my activity".
You may have recognised it. It is the Hippocratic Oath. According to scholars, it is a
document even more ancient than Hippocrates of Cos, to which tradition assigns the words.
Those words have always been a reference for the ethics of medicine.
But the Third Millennium has begun with signs of linguistic confusion, the Babel of
thought, and so even this founding stone of medical science vacillates under the hits of
political correctness.
In fact, one can already die of political correctness. It has happened a few days ago in
Melbourne, and the Skynews satellite has bounced the news to the four corners of the
Earth.
The victim is a 56-year-old man, described thus: smoker, in need of a new cardiac valve to
carry on with life. He was on the waiting list for a transplant days before Christmas.
Then the doctors refused to operate. Why? Because he decided not to give up smoking.
Doctors and surgeons at the best hospitals in Melbourne told the Herald Sun that this is
now common practice, to refuse transplants and lung reduction surgery, arterial bypasses
and coronary operations to smokers.
Greg Snell, doctor of pneumology at the Alfred Hospital, reiterates: "We do intend to
perform high-level surgery, including lung operations, to those who are addicted to
nicotine."
On the same wavelength is Lou Irving, his counterpart at the Austin and Repatriation
Medical Centre, who states: "Why should taxpayers pay for smokers? Resources are
wasted on somebody who contributes to his own destruction." But those who smoke are
taxpayers, aren't they?
Yet in Australia's Alfred Hospital, transplants are authorised only if the patient has not
touched a cigarette for at least six months: otherwise, he is abandoned to his destiny.
Goodbye Hippocratic oath, goodbye "relief of suffering".
Only one voice dissented from what is already the official position of the Order of
Physicians of kangaroo country: Julian Savulescu, from the Murdoch Institute of Paediatric
Research. He stated that the refusal of transplants to smokers is not a solution. In fact,
there are many diseases that can be attributed to the patient's lifestyle but have little
to do with tobacco. "The idea of making people responsible for their diseases, and
convincing them that they are paying the consequences of their actions may attract some,
but it is actually selective discrimination," Savulescu said.
Unfortunately, he saw correctly. In the era of equal opportunity and of do-gooding at all
cost, we have to come to terms with a new form of racism. Subtle, slimy, untrustworthy, it
even lacks the intellectual honesty of the "old style" discrimination -
repugnant, but proud to be so. Today, instead, we have to come to terms with a deformed
image of reality - the reality served on the table by the TV news broadcasts, cooked by
the press of the regime, and digested by parties and political "movements".
So, in the name of universal well-being, in the race towards the crazy dream of a society
of good men by decree, we have started butchering all those categories of people we do not
like. In the name of civil rights, we have removed the enslavers and the tyrants of the
past, and replaced them with a Vaseline-coated dictatorship, a condescending tyranny
which, every day, emanates brand new racial laws: it is the Therapeutic State. It is
health nazism.
We are at the daily mercy of an "expertocracy". We chase these "wise
ones" in the hope they will dictate the twelve tables of Utopia to us. And the wise
ones, whether they are dressed in a doctor's white coat or the black shirt of the censor,
are always ready to point their fingers to new scapegoats and toward the immolation of new
vices or perversions -- to cleanse our consciences, and achieve Heaven on Earth.
Well, Lenin tried that already; there is nothing new under the sun. And now, as before,
people are dying - but this time there is something more. The man who died in Australia is
not just a victim of political correctness. His death represents the defeat of ethics -
and that concerns all of us.
Alberto Mingardi
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