Originally posted 2005-10-01
Here’s a question for consideration: why aren’t willful practitioners of quack medicine civilly and criminally liable for injuries caused by their actions?
In a recent business law exam, one of the questions involved a coach who decided to make his players “tough” and have them practice in the heat w/o water, even after some began showing symptoms of heat exhaustion/stroke. When one of the players collapsed and died on the way to the locker room after practice, the question was posed: what liability did this coach have? The gist of the answer, of course, was that he was liable for the tort of wrongful death, having caused the player’s death by his negligence. He was also criminally liable, having so grossly violated his duty of care toward this player that he faced prosecution, probably for involuntary manslaughter.
Now, compare that with a real-life “alternative medicine” case involving an acquaintance of mine. Probably around a year ago by now, his wife began experiencing some weird symptoms–extreme weakness, shortness of breath, and I don’t remember what all else. They began a series of tests, but soon decided to stop, though she wasn’t significantly better off. They knew what was wrong–their doctor, actually an MD if my information is correct, had determined that she was suffering from mercury poisoning, and had her amalgam fillings drilled out (again, this is based on recollections of 2nd/3rd-hand relations of events). After these events transpired, I didn’t hear much about the situation for a while, although I knew that Mrs. M. was still unable to perform many of the activities of daily life.
Recently, around a year later, Mrs. M. went back to our local small-town hospital. From there, she was flown to a hospital in a larger city nearby, where she entered the ICU. A week later, I heard that she’d been diagnosed with some sort of treatable, though not entirely curable, autoimmune disease. During her hospital stay, she’d gained about 16 pounds–apparently not an unwelcome development in this case.
So…what, my dear students of morality, what should the “mercury poisoning” doctor’s liability be for causing a year of being an invalid? And, had Mrs. M. died from lack of treatment of her actual problem, based on (reprehensible, IMO) exclusive reliance on this “doctor’s” diagnosis, what would it be in that case? How does the fact that this snake-oil salesman has the letters “MD” after his name, and thus presents himself as worthy of consultation, as an expert in matters of health, affect the case?
In my opinion, such a person should be held to have willfully, with premeditation, caused the death of another person, should that person indeed die. (Does that definition sound at all familiar to you?) The public places great trust in members of the medical profession. When a “medical doctor” not only grossly breaches that trust by diagnosing a serious problem as being caused by something he knows (or, if he doesn’t know, by his training and by his representation should have known) to be highly unlikely, knowing that this false diagnosis will keep his patients from looking elsewhere for the cause of problems, it seems reasonable to assume that he has consciously chosen between fraudulently gained money and a human life, and has chosen to destroy that life in preference for the money.
OK, so I’m not a legal scholar. On moral grounds, though, this kind of behavior seems worthy of the most severe penalties that the legal system has to offer. As to innocent purveyors of quackery…I might write about this later.
Anon commented:
This sounds like a troubling, and very serious situation you are describing. I would also take your observations one step further. I was diagnosed with cancer a number of years ago, and with the wisdom God gave the medical field, I have been healed. BUT during the years I was battling the illness, and the side affects of the treatment, I was inundated with advice, and coercion to use this or that , with fabulous sounding testimonials. One question none of these people could ever answer me satisfactorily;”Why is your product so expensive if the purpose is to help people who are sick?” People who are ill have enough stress, without the added stress of “Christian” friends hounding them to try this or that miracle cure.
