Right! The decision in Lee v. Weisberg is unnecessary if the rabbi (or preacher in the next case, or physician in this hypo) has enough grace and wit to say something inspirational or comforting without having to explicitly resort to religious exhorting. Imagination and consideration for the audience might make a lot of these cases go away.
Ed Darrell
Dallas
Sanford Levinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Sanford Levinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jim writes:_______________________________________________I believe you have a heart. I suggested nothing to the contrary. I think a physician who believes his competence is confined to the clinical observation that brain and heart function has irreversibly ceased is not aware of all of his competencies, and doesn't reflect the great tradition in medicine.We surely agree on this. A doctor who simply says, "You're son has died. Face up to it" is a lout. And it is also fair to say that medical education (and thus the notion of the "practice of medicine" should include some attention to empathy and the _expression_ of basic human concern. (One might say much the same thing about legal training, incidentally.) But I was responding to a specific example about what might be called religious solace. Can we compromise on something like this: If a parent says, "I'm sure that Tom is in heaven right now," my kind of doctor should say, "I certainly hope so." (I have no reason not to hope that the statement is true; I simply have no reason to think it is.)sandy
To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
