Father Jose Maria Montiu de Nuix, Ph.D. in Philosophy, offers this reflection on the need to defend doctors’ rights in today’s society, as ideology seeks to be above medical and biological science.
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Today the state of the question is that the rights of members of the medical class are not respected. In fact, in recent years a unique thought has been developing, which is that usually called politically correct.
It’s an ideology that seeks to be above medical and biological science. This pretension has even affected all that is most important in medicine and biology in regard to the human person: life, etc. even to the point of denying truly scientific facts, of a medical and biological nature, the most elemental, the most patent, the most evident, the most obvious.
The function that is proper to a doctor isn’t recognized either: to be at the service of health and life. The very nature of things is denied. There is contempt for the chromosomic constitution of the human being, the relevance of the information contained in the DNA . . .
Ideology is regarded as superior to natural objective observation, to experimental science, to common sense, to what is most consistent with experimental science, etc. It is considered that the voice of true medical and scientific science has no value in face of an ideology that is lacking altogether a truly scientific basis. It is hoped to impose ideology only because it is one’s current of thought. It’s to be imposed by mere pressure, by force, by mere imposition.
It’s obvious that, in this ideologized situation in which only ideology counts, and in face of which science counts for nothing, neither can medical and biological scientists, doctors, and biologists, count for anything. Very important resolutions are made of great transcendence in the medical and biological realms without even counting on medical and biological authorities. They even pressure the whole medical class so that no one can make use of the right to conscientious objection without having to suffer some type of punishment, as one is not forgiven for contradicting the ideology desired to be imposed.
The state of the question manifests clearly how we are before an attack on all the medical class, a real disregard for it. The anti-scientific dimension of the ideology is necessarily united to an anti-scientist attitude, concretely, anti-doctors and anti-biologists. This aversion is directed more forcefully, of course, against scientists that have a greater degree of scientificity.
In short, it’s evident that the aforesaid ideology, in the many questions it addresses, is clearly contrary to the right of the members of the medical class. So, all of them are constantly scorned. This scorn is the only common denominator of the great medical and biological questions that are being posed. Instead, for example, the culture of death, even though very extended, does not become their common denominator.
The pro-abortion flood triggered, as a natural reaction, the defense of the right to life, the creation of a flood of pro-life associations. Analogously, as something that every day is more urgent, is the flood of abuses against the medical class, which should trigger a flood of associations for the defense of doctors’ rights. If this isn’t achieved, it can be foreseen that there will be many more abuses, as ideologies can do without scientists, just as revolutionaries can do without serious intellectuals.
Translation by Virginia M. Forrester
