dlowan wrote:Joe - why will you insist on ONE criterion and one only?
I keep telling you that it is a this and - not a this or.
There are AND positions. These - especially in medical and other professional ethical decisions - are the meat of daily ethical decision making
Defend your position that there are not.
In this case, I am merely attempting to distinguish relevant factors from the irrelevant. As we have already seen, in both your and
smt's view, the issue of informed consent is largely irrelevant to the issue of infant male circumcision, since you both are quite willing to perform
necessary medical procedures on non-consenting infants.
dlowan wrote:Ethical decisions require the taking into account of all sorts of criteria simultaneously all the time - and weighing them up.
But, in this particular case, the criterion of informed consent doesn't weigh anything at all. And, as it appears from both your and
smt's posts, the same can be said for the criteria of pain and irreversibility.
dlowan wrote:What is YOUR position?
I outlined my position on infant male circumcision in my first post on this thread: I really don't care one way or the other. I do, however, care a great deal about the field of ethics. That's why I'm still here.
dlowan wrote:What is your position upon the following scenario...
I have been attempting to narrow down the issue to avoid engaging in irrelevancies. I will not be drawn into a discussion of 21-year olds when the proper focus is on infants.
dlowan wrote:I think your contention that more than one criterion cannot be used at the same time to be ridiculous - once again, defend it.
I never said that more than one criterion cannot be used simultaneously. I have simply pointed out that, in this particular case, there appears to be one criterion that is
determinative. And you have given me no reason to think that your position is otherwise,
dlowan, since you state:
dlowan wrote:Of course I am not going to say that fixing a faulty heart valve or a cleft palate is not ethical because an infant cannot consent. These are medically necessary and defensible - it is easy to do a risk/benefit analysis that comes out in favour.
Like
smt, then, you have one genuine criterion -- medical necessity -- and a number of factors that are, in the end, subsumed under that single criterion.
dlowan wrote:Joe - as for your rudeness about my ethics - do you hold every ethical belief you have equally fervently?
How was I rude?
dlowan wrote:For instance, were you a good christian, would you hold not coveting your neighbour's ass as highly as not killing?
I cannot comment as a good Christian. I will say, however, that one is not obliged to treat all ethical transgressions equally. I may hold that both coveting and killing are unethical, but it certainly does not follow that I must therefore treat them as
equivalent.
dlowan wrote:The Australian Medical Association position - and more so the Paediatric association DOES differ - in that it actively DIScourages male infant circumcision.
Only for infants younger than six months old. That, as I pointed out, is the only significant difference. Yet that proviso is not significant as a matter of
ethics. After all, the infant is in much the same situation at six months as he is at birth: incapable of assenting to a medical procedure but capable of pain. The only difference is that he's six months older.
