A leading medical expert and ethics lecturer has expressed “great concern” about what he described as the “under the radar process” by which the Medical Council dropped a section of its ethical guidelines which said doctors “must not take part in the deliberate killing of a patient.”
Prof Des O’Neill, a Consultant Geriatrician who is involved in research and teaching on clinical ethics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, wrote that “the recent removal of the ethical stricture on euthanasia and assisted suicide by the Medical Council in its new ethics guide (ninth edition), without debate and consultation, has troubled many doctors.”
In an article in The Medical Independent, Prof O’Neill says that he was prompted by the change to review how it came about, leading him to request the minutes of the ethics committee from the Medical Council.
“The retrieval of these took almost four months and necessitated a Freedom of Information request. The findings were a cause of great concern with regard to the processes, mechanisms, and integrity of ethical reasoning within the Council,” he wrote.
The 9th edition of the Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics, published by the Medical Council in 2023 dropped the section which told doctors “you must not take part in the deliberate killing of a patient.”
Prof O’Shea said that it had been established that clinical ethics, shaped over millenia, were separate from law – as described the phrase of the ethics committee of the Medical Council which stated that “All citizens are required to act within the law therefore medical ethics will be shaped by the law of the land” as “chilling”.
“For those who think the Houses of the Oireachtas are going to be a beacon of clear and progressive ethical thinking, the recent referendum debacle should act as a salutary rejoinder,” he wrote.
He said that the Medical Council ethics committee “then progressed to an action line” when they said “If an issue is covered by legal provisions, these provisions apply.”
He was strongly critical of their approach descripting it as an “ethically impoverished stance”.
By this, the committee is saying what is legal is ethical, which has been quoted subsequently as the rationale for dropping the long-standing and well-reasoned ethical stricture on euthanasia and assisted suicide. That this ethically impoverished stance was adopted speaks volumes about either ethical illiteracy or else an unarticulated strategy to remove an important ethical principle from the guide.
Prof O’Neil said the change was “radical” and that the ethics committee had failed “to appropriately communicate this to the wider profession”. He wrote:
It is not even clear that this fundamental change was clearly and appropriately articulated to the full members of the Medical Council when they were asked to endorse the working process and outcomes of the ethics committee.
The lack of appropriate communication and signalling affected the 2021 consultation on the ethics guide. As with others, I tendered a submission, unaware as we all were that the Council was adopting an ‘if it’s legal, it’s ethical’ stance. This would have radically altered submissions if this had been known.
He also said that what he described as a “lack of openness” was “compounded” when a wide range of professional bodies – including members of the ICGP, the RCPI, the RCSI, Colleges of Anaesthesiology and Psychiatry, HSE, and National Doctors Training and Planning – were invited by the Medical Council to a consultation on revising the guide in June 2022.
“This would have been an ideal opportunity to expose the topic to debate among a broad range of medical disciplines,” he said.
However, “the dropping of the stricture on deliberate killing was one of the few sections (and the most significant change) which was not presented at this meeting,” Prof O’Neill revealed.
“That this under-the-radar process should occur when significant public and political debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide was ongoing and prominent is very concerning. Private Members Bills on the topic go back to 2015. Widespread coverage of a full Dáil debate and vote occurred in 2020, near the time of the change in direction of the ethics committee.”
He said that the Medical Council needed to consider if they “may have erred in their processes, thinking, and communication” – and added that, in particular, “the Council’s portrayal of concerns about its processes and content as ‘misinterpretation by some’ in this public domain was condescending and dismissive. It is not in the spirit of modern medical openness. Medical bodies and institutions can err just as individual clinicians can.”
Lasting damage to the credibility and standing of the Medical Council as a focus for considered ethical reflection would result if the stance and the process was not corrected, the ethics expert said.
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It was intentional, what a legacy we leave for our kids, state says its ok to kill people, state says its ok to abuse kids and use them as labs, state says its ok let illegals do whatever they want with impunity, state says its ok to break the law, state says its ok to for the so called police to assault its own people, state says its ok to poison the water, state says its ok to racially discriminate against them, state says its ok to groom children and expose them to porn, state says mental illness is normal and normal rational thinking is far right…. the list is endless. The lunatics are running the asylum and that is the legacy we leave for our children. Stop the fucking world, I want to get off!
The” save granny” argument for enforcement of covid19 rules is now shown up to be totally hypocritical
Well done to Dr O’ Neill and the other doctors who have stood up for patients
What about the rest of the medics?
We started down the path that began with the State legalising when health workers can take a life – abortion. It ends with State legislation telling health workers when they *must* take a life.
This quiet removal from medical ethical guidelines is further proof of the path we are on, when we stop attributing an inherent value to *every* human life.
So much happening under the radar or by stealth these days as was evidenced by the recent disclosure of documents which were withheld from the public prior to the recent referendums. There is a need for ‘more glasnost’ from those who make decisions that seriously affect our lives.
It’s another culture war issue being launched by ‘liberal progressives’. Concepts such as ethics, morality, democracy; are just words. Words that they will use to virtue signal when it suits them, also words they will discard when they get in the way.
They are sneaking death through, just like they did with other woke policies that physically damages Irish people!
Surely an unborn baby would be construed as a “patient”?
Nothing comes as a surprise any more but surely the decision can be challenged.
Brave Brave British Doctor tells us exactly what will happen when this legislation comes in …think of this scene…hello police our daughter is missing never came home from school,that’s ok she just got euthanised as she was not happy with certain things and the hospital sold…sorry I mean removed her organs before she died for the good of mankind…think this is farfetched listen to his video to warn us
https://www.bitchute.com/video/hJJqK6ohv9uf/
People need to wake up fast because there are things happening to kidnapped children worldwide by satan worshipping elites who control government’s worldwide that would make your hair stand on end,not to mention the utter cruelty to animals used as guinea pigs for big pharma and your lovely vaccines…they are killing perfectly healthy animals in dogs homes now because that the next thing get rid of your pets…we are dealing with demon possessed people here and nothing fazes them…Baal worship is alive and kicking world wide…child sacrifice is still rampant…and your film actors/actresses musicians etc are involved in it. Any musician,actor being pushed by everyone has been compromised you don’t get there unless you do what they want…He who has eyes to see will see
4 months it took to obtain minutes of the Council meeting. And also a FIR. Not only does that show a profoundly evil contempt for judicious process toward the electorate, the fact that this “Medical Council” whomever they are made up of, actively sought to suppress their deliberations from the very group of professionals they are charged with representing, demostrates two positive courses of action due to their now untennable position.
1. Disband the Medical Council as unfit for purpose and neutralize all of their deliberations.
2. Elect a new council from among avowed Medical Professionals with appropriate work experience only, in order to protect the soverignty and integrity of the Irish Medical Profession itself. Irish Medical Professionals have a basic human right under the Irish Constitution to say NO to all and any ideologies at odds with their faith and practice experience.