If I Were You, Mrs B
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 1980
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
British academic lawyer Professor Sir Ian Kennedy explores the concepts of modern medicine in the fourth Reith lecture from his series entitled 'Unmasking Medicine'.
In this lecture entitled 'If I Were You, Mrs B', Professor Kennedy contemplates the ethical medical issues that doctors have to make and debates whether they are trained enough to decide such complex issues. He argues that doctors are making principled and moral decisions rather than just technically medical ones and with this blurring of boundaries comes consequences. He explores some examples to argue his point that doctors need to be trained in the humanities and not just the sciences.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.3 | This lecture in the series Unmasking Medicine, given by Ian Kennedy, was originally broadcast in 1980. |
| 0:11.4 | In practicing medicine, doctors routinely make decisions. They make judgments. This much is commonplace. |
| 0:18.5 | But what sort of judgments or decisions are they? |
| 0:21.4 | The immediate reply of most people would be that their judgments based on the technical |
| 0:25.8 | skill and training of the doctor. |
| 0:28.4 | I do not agree. |
| 0:30.3 | Doctors make decisions as to what ought to be done. |
| 0:33.7 | Some, but only some of these decisions, are matters of technical skill, that is, based on the observation of objective facts and the application of particular skills in the light of such facts. |
| 0:45.4 | I submit the majority of decisions taken by doctors are not technical. They are instead moral and ethical. |
| 0:53.2 | They are decisions about what ought to be done in the light of certain values. |
| 0:58.0 | Now this creates a problem. |
| 1:00.1 | Doctors claim a special, indeed unique competence in a particular area, |
| 1:04.5 | the practice of medicine. |
| 1:06.1 | So medical judgments, medical decisions, are for them and them alone. |
| 1:12.6 | But if I'm right that it's a fundamental feature of medical practice, medical decisions, are for them and them alone. But if I'm right that it's a fundamental feature of medical practice that doctors are making ethical judgments, it means |
| 1:17.6 | that ethics, to the extent that they touch on how doctors choose to practice medicine, |
| 1:22.6 | are something for them and them alone. This is a surprising and even dangerous notion. It would normally be |
| 1:30.6 | accepted that ethical principles, the principles by reference to which we organise our lives |
| 1:35.4 | and decide what we ought or ought not to do, are not the preserve of any one group. |
| 1:40.9 | But the doctor may reply that, yes, he does does make ethical decisions but these are medical ethics |
| 1:46.2 | and so they are properly for doctors alone this would suggest that there's a realm of ethics |
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