Inter-Varsity Press

CONTENTS

Foreword by John Stott

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. What’s going on? Fundamental themes in health care and society

2. Biblical perspectives on humanness

3. Reproductive technology and the start of life

4. Fetal screening and the quest for a healthy baby

5. Brave new world: biotechnology and stem cells

6. Abortion and infanticide: a historical perspective

7. When is a person? Christian perspectives on the beginning of life

8. The dying baby: dilemmas of neonatal care

9. A good death? Euthanasia and assisted suicide

10. A better way to die

11. The Hippocratic tradition and the practice of modern medicine

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FOREWORD

What is so impressive about Professor Wyatt is that he combines within himself three persons. First, he is a trained and well-informed scientist, with an extensive knowledge of medicine, biology, genetics and reproductive technology. He writes, not as an armchair theorist, but as an experienced practitioner. He takes readers into his confidence, shares his expertise with them, and expects them to make up their own minds on each issue.

Secondly, he is a Christian, who stands firmly in the tradition of historic Christianity. His well-grounded Christian faith informs all his thinking, as he seeks to relate his biblical worldview to the complexities of the modern world.

Thirdly, he is a human being with all the vulnerability that this entails. He sees in the incarnation the perfect model of empathy, of entering deeply into other people’s experience of pain. As a neonatologist, he has the grievous responsibility of telling parents that their baby is dying. Then he weeps with those who weep.

John Wyatt’s personal integrity shines through this book from beginning to end. He makes no attempt to conceal disturbing facts, or to hide his own struggles and uncertainties. He ducks no questions and offers no glib solutions to complex contemporary problems.

Nor does he underestimate the seriousness of the current liberal assault on traditional Christian doctrine and ethics, not least on the sanctity of human beings, made in the image of God. He has read (and debated with) many of the principal professional assailants. The names of Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, Ronald Dworkin and John Harris keep recurring. Their arguments are summarized and John Wyatt begins to formulate a reasoned response to them.

I find him at his most fresh and imaginative when he develops his analogy of God as the artist and of the human being as his ‘fl awed masterpiece’. Each person is a masterpiece of divine creation, reflecting the divine image, and so possessing incalculable value. Yet evil has spoiled God’s creation. A quotation will give readers a flavour of John Wyatt’s skill:

The original masterpiece, created with such love and embodying such artistry has become fl awed, defaced, contaminated . . . the reflection of God’s character is distorted and partially obscured. But through the imperfections, we can still see the outlines of the original masterpiece. It still inspires a sense of wonder at the underlying design.

‘The task of health professionals,’ he continues, ‘is to protect and restore the masterpieces entrusted to our care, in line with the original creator’s intentions.’

John Stott - Rector Emeritus of All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, and President of the Institute of Contemporary Christianity

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From the Introduction

When I was a medical student in London in the 1970s, I received just one lecture on medical ethics in my six years of undergraduate professional training. I was taught that all the practising doctor needed to know about the subject could be summarized under five A’s: Abortion, Adultery, Alcoholism, Association (with non-medically qualified physicians or ‘quacks’) and Advertising. Of these evils, which the General Medical Council was dedicated to stamping out, it was widely held that the most objectionable was Advertising.

But the world has changed. Medical ethics has been transformed from an obscure and unimportant branch of professional practice into a high-profile media activity. ‘Shock horror’ tabloid journalism and highbrow television documentaries have brought the issues to a world audience. A single medical case can now achieve the same media prominence as the latest disclosure about the British royals or a soap opera scandal.

What are the underlying forces behind the modern transformation in medical ethics? And how can people who wish to be faithful to the historic Christian faith respond to the challenges and the opportunities of recent and dramatic medical progress?

This book attempts to formulate a Christian perspective on a number of central ethical dilemmas raised by modern medical practice. While writing from my individual perspective as a practising clinician and Anglican layperson, I have tried to reflect a broad theological position of historic or ‘foundational’ trinitarian Christianity, a theological position which takes a high view of Scripture and of the doctrines of the ancient creeds and councils of the Early Church. I am not a professional philosopher or theologian. For most of my professional life I have been a practising paediatrician and a Christian believer who has had to face some of these agonizing dilemmas as part of my daily medical practice. What I do have to offer is a view from the coalface. It is a view which has been created in my personal struggle to understand what is going on in the world of modern medicine and the attempt to develop an authentic Christian response.

These questions are not just matters for an interesting academic debate, of the sort that philosophers, ethicists and students love to engage in. These dilemmas touch us at the most intimate, painful and vulnerable part of our lives. Many of the people who read this book will be carrying secret sorrows which they cannot share with others. The statistics show that more than one couple in seven will suffer from some form of fertility problem, and many will never be able to have children naturally. Some parents who pick up this book will have watched their child struggle and die, or will have given birth to a stillborn baby. Some will have had an abortion, although even their closest friends and relatives may not know. Some will have watched a close relative die in pain or emotional distress. A few will know that they suffer from a major genetic disorder which is likely to curtail their life, and they are wondering how they and their families will cope with the future. Many more of us are unknowingly carrying genes which may result in major illness, disability and death later in life: diseases such as Alzheimer’s, stroke or breast cancer. Virtually all of us are carrying the genes for devastating illnesses which we might pass on to our children. Many people who pick up this book, for instance, will be carrying the gene for cystic fibrosis, though they are completely unaware of it.

So these are not just ethical issues ‘out there’: they touch us at the core of our being. Nobody is immune: we all share in a common humanity, a physical nature which is painfully vulnerable and deeply fl awed. As you read the following case histories, you may well find them disturbing and painful, as indeed I have done. A French philosopher of the Enlightenment once said that ‘death, like the sun, should not be stared at’. Yet that is precisely what we shall be doing in this book: staring at death and at the questions and fears that it raises. …