{"id":3616,"date":"2019-10-17T21:51:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T20:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=3616"},"modified":"2019-10-17T22:01:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T21:01:50","slug":"public-reason-and-physicians-duty-to-refrain-from-religious-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2019\/10\/17\/public-reason-and-physicians-duty-to-refrain-from-religious-discourse\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Reason and Physicians’ Duty to Refrain from Religious Discourse"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Greenblum and Ryan Hubbard<\/p>\n

We recently offered a reply to criticisms of our view that physicians should refrain from deliberating with their patients on religious grounds when helping them make medical decisions.\u00a0 Part of what prompted our research into this topic is recent work discussing appropriate ways of communicating with religious patients who cite the possibility of a miracle to inform medical decisions.\u00a0 Some argue that miracle invocation should not factor into the decision-making process, while others argue that it should.\u00a0 What\u2019s common to both sides is the assumption that it\u2019s permissible for physicians to deliberate with their patients on religious grounds.\u00a0 We dispute this assumption.<\/p>\n

A crucial part of our argument is that physicians are relevantly akin to public officials such that they should be constrained by public reasons when making medical decisions.\u00a0 Public reasons are considerations that any reasonable person would consider reasons.\u00a0 Thus, religious considerations would not count as public reasons.\u00a0 As one critic correctly notes, this view draws from the liberal political philosophy of John Rawls.\u00a0 Indeed, one of our aims has been to emphasize the public dimension of medical practice, thereby moving the normative framework to the level of political philosophy.<\/p>\n

Many of the criticisms push back against our view that physicians are relevantly akin to public officials and should only deliberate on public reason\u2019s terms.\u00a0 Some critics objected to the use of public reason as overly exclusionary and oppressive.\u00a0 Part of the worry here is that public reasons and reasonableness are inevitably determined by those in privileged, powerful positions.\u00a0 And this results in oppressing marginalized, less-privileged groups.<\/p>\n

There are at least three problems with this objection.\u00a0 The first is that that an intellectual division of labor is hardly evidence of oppression. \u00a0Second, citing public reason can avoid oppressing marginalized groups by bringing such groups into the conversation with the appropriate interlocuters.\u00a0 This is something we believe should be done. For instance, in our original article we describe how chaplains can \u201ctranslate\u201d religious discourse into terms consistent with public reason. The third problem with this objection is that it presupposes a relativistic view of reasonableness, one that simply expresses the interests of the powerful. But this conception of reasonableness is not the one we endorse. Indeed, we think reasonableness is a valuable tool to wield against the powerful.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paper title: Physicians’ Duty to Refrain from Religious Discourse: A Response to Critics<\/a><\/p>\n

Authors: Ryan Hubbard and Jake Greenblum<\/p>\n

Affiliations: Ryan Hubbard, Gulf Coast State College, Social Sciences Division. Jake Greenblum, University Health System, San Antonio, TX<\/p>\n

Competing interests: n\/a<\/p>\n

Social media accounts of post author(s): @RyanKHubbard<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jake Greenblum and Ryan Hubbard We recently offered a reply to criticisms of our view that physicians should refrain from deliberating with their patients on religious grounds when helping them make medical decisions.\u00a0 Part of what prompted our research into this topic is recent work discussing appropriate ways of communicating with religious patients who […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[968,8057,2745,576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinical-ethics","category-medical-ethics","category-professionalism","category-the-art-of-medicine"],"yoast_head":"\nPublic Reason and Physicians' Duty to Refrain from Religious Discourse - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2019\/10\/17\/public-reason-and-physicians-duty-to-refrain-from-religious-discourse\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Public Reason and Physicians' Duty to Refrain from Religious Discourse - 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