| I am a physician. A 30-year-old woman, a student at a local
school, came for an initial visit. Her condition was
unremarkable. A few weeks later the administrator of her school,
a longstanding patient, mentioned how impressive it is that this
woman continues to study despite having terminal cancer. The
school even held a fundraiser to help with her medical bills. I
said nothing, but must I let the school know that she does not
have cancer? May I confront her about this? -- Name Withheld
Your silence to the administrator was golden: Medical ethics
forbids you to disclose even that a patient is healthy,
paradoxical as that seems. This strict concern for patient
privacy is meant to ensure that nobody will be discouraged from
seeking care for fear of what may be revealed to others. The law
takes a similar stance. A legal authority I consulted said that
in this circumstance "the doctor cannot (and thankfully did not)
acknowledge that this individual is a patient." As I, a
nonlawyer, understand it, you may confirm that you are a doctor
and that Earth is your home planet.
This need not consign you to silence, to feeling implicated in
your patient's deceit. You've suggested an excellent next step:
Discuss the situation with the woman herself and urge her to come
clean. You can say that you heard about the fundraiser, a
quasi-public event, without referring to the administrator, and
ask why people are raising money to help her pay for treatments
for a disease she does not have.
It is conceivable that your patient's behavior requires not
moral reform but psychiatric treatment. Either way, you would do
well to remind her of the pitfalls -- legal, ethical, emotional
-- of engaging in fraud and of your unwillingness to be involved
in it even indirectly. If she persists in this conduct, you may
ultimately decline to continue seeing her as a patient.
My son and daughter-in-law belong to a church with different
beliefs from mine, and thus my new grandchildren, a few months
old, were not going to be baptized. My 1950s Catholic background
would not let me sleep, so I snuck them off to the laundry and
performed private rites. Do I get eternal reward or damnation? --
Name Withheld
By convening in the laundry you may have taken too literally
the idea of baptism as the washing away of sin. I only hope your
"private rites" did not include the spin cycle.
You will receive neither eternal reward nor eternal damnation
but might face eternal resentment if your son and daughter-in-law
discover what you've been up to. They may well consider the
religious guidance of their children to be a parental
prerogative, reasonably enough. For anyone to intervene, even a
well-intentioned family member, might confuse the kids (if they
are old enough to recall your idiosyncratic ritual) and undermine
their relationship with their parents. One ethical guideline: a
description of conduct that begins with "I snuck" is apt to raise
doubts.
To a secular person, an incantation whispered over an infant
is harmless nonsense. But as a believer, you should be aware that
Catholicism regards baptism as a sacrament to be performed by a
priest except in an emergency, when anyone may step in. But
"emergency" is generally held to mean the imminent death of the
child, not a doctrinal dispute with the parents. |