Posts by Robert E. Cranston, MD, MA (Ethics)

In a recent Hasting Center Bioethics Forum Essay, “Supporting Patients and Students Who Are Immigrants: What to do and Why Most Bioethicists Won’t Do It,” Mark Kuczewski asserts that bioethicists, and medical systems in general, should not cooperate with any governmental attempts to identify or detain aliens who seek medical care within our hospitals and clinics.

We have no real power to change others. We can point them toward truth, we can pray for them and we can show them rational and emotional reasons to change; ultimately, any growth on their part must be motivated by their own desire and decision to change.

I have a dear Christian friend of whom I have finally had to say, “This is as good as it gets,” and leave him in the Lord’s hands.

As James 4:17 says, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (NKJV).

As a young man, I struggled some, wondering what my true calling in life was. At age 18, after months of prayer, I felt the Lord was calling me to life as a physician. Later, in medical school, the multiple options for work within medicine fascinated and, at times, bewildered me. They say the average undergrad student changes their major five or six times. I don’t know what the number is for medical students, but I know I seriously considered multiple options before I finally settled on neurology as a career choice, and later God also led me into working in palliative medicine, healthcare leadership and medical ethics.

Pontius Pilate asked in John 18:38, “What is truth?” (NIV). More than 2,000 years later, we often find ourselves in the same position. It is hard to know what, or whom, to believe. Many of the people we would expect to be reasonably honest and transparent can no longer be trusted. The faith we place in major media outlets, large corporations, government officials and even churches may be at an all-time low.

What would you think of a major regulatory body, known for its demanding standards for quality and utility—read integrity—that suddenly abandons its own rules, despite the loud protestations of its own quality advisory committee, and put its imprimatur of approval on a medication that: 1) fails to meet its established endpoints of utility; 2) costs more than $50,000 per year; and 3) has well-documented negative side effects? Not much, I hope. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently did with Aducanumab (trade name Aduhelm), a new monthly injection for early Alzheimer’s Disease.