Canadian Doctor Sentenced for Assisted Suicide
Dr. Ramesh Kumar Sharma, a British Columbian physician, pled guilty to attempting to assisted the suicide of a 92-year-old nursing home resident. The woman survived. Although he was not jailed, has been stripped of his license to practice medicine and subjected to other restrictions during his probationary period. Good. Doctors are not licensed as killers.
P.S. In an earlier incident, he was convicted of having sex with a patient. This guy really doesn't take the Hippocratic Oath seriously which prohibits both euthanasia and sexual congress with patients.
Labels: Assisted Suicide Conviction
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:08 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
If doctors shouldn't be licensed to kill, why are they permitted, with little controversy or protest, to separate siamese twins joined at the heart or brain, with the full knowledge that one of them will die?
Actually, aren't the procedures for separating those joined at the head, at least, getting better?
In any case, the intent is not to kill; there is a chance one might die, but no certainty. Ever hear of the double effect? It's standard ethical theory. If in attempting to correct a malady death accidentally results, there is no ethical transgression. Injecting someone with poison, however, heals nothing but only kills.
But you knew all this, didn't you? Your point is that you don't think the double effect is valid. Why not?
The 'double effect' essentially says that 'the ends justify the means', so long as you spin your motives the right way and claim that your actions were the only way of achieving the 'good' result.
So it would permit the use of nuclear weapons to achieve population control, if one was consistent.
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