A rchive Date
[ 11-03-2001 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[State of ethical confusion
By GEORGE JONAS -- Toronto Sun
March 8, 2001
About a month ago Ontario Superior Court judge Clair Marchand found the employer of a Barrie receptionist named Linda Hunt partially liable for the tragic result of her decision to drive a car with about twice the legal limit of alcohol in her bloodstream. The result was an accident which left Hunt disabled.
Judge Marchand found the employer liable to the tune of $300,000 and legal costs because the accident followed an office Christmas party in 1994. Reportedly, the employer offered to call Hunt's husband to drive her home, or to call a taxi for her.
But even though Hunt left the party on foot and continued drinking at a pub with some co-workers (who also offered to call her a cab), the mere fact that her initial inebriation occurred at the office party created a liability for her employer, at least in the mind of a contemporary Canadian court.
There were many comments in the media following Judge Marchand's decision, mainly derisive. One editorial called the result "a legal travesty." This was also the tone of the buzz at dinner parties. Most people didn't like the way Canada's social mores seemed to be evolving, but everyone agreed where they were heading. We were inexorably moving toward the elimination of both individual responsibility and autonomy.
It went beyond a matter of money. Our legal system tried holding so-called "deep pockets" or people "in a position of authority" liable for the misfortune or error of others not only in civil suits, but in criminal prosecutions.
CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE
In Ontario an innkeeper was criminally charged after - brace yourself for this - pointing a customer in the direction of the toilet. The washrooms happened to be in the basement; the customer fell down the stairs, and the innkeeper was charged with criminal negligence causing death. There was no suggestion the stairs were unsafe, only that they existed. The prosecution's case didn't survive a preliminary hearing, so it didn't become as notorious as Hunt's, but a charge had been laid.
I think our moral confusion is even deeper than it appears from these examples. While in some cases we abandon common sense in order to put a liability on one person for another person's bad luck or bad judgment, in other cases we exempt people from liability even when they refuse to do their plain duty.
According to a recent news story reported by The Canadian Press, Toronto surgeon Dr. Michael McKee won't do a complex kind of bone surgery, called Ilizarov reconstruction, on smokers. This last-resort procedure is performed on people whose fractures don't heal. Often the only remaining alternative is amputation.
Apparently, Dr. McKee and his colleagues found that the operation has a normal failure rate of 8%, which increases to 30% in smokers. The reason may be that smoking reduces the oxygen bones require to heal.
The problem isn't, of course, that Dr. McKee advises his smoking patients of these findings. The problem isn't that he strongly urges them to stop smoking to improve their chances of keeping their limbs. The problem is that he reportedly refuses to operate on them unless they follow his advice.
According to the news story, Dr. McKee is comfortable with his position. He doesn't consider it unethical to refuse treatment to some patients based on "lifestyle or behaviour."
The noted criminal lawyer, Eddie Greenspan, has a different view. He thinks a doctor who refuses to operate because a procedure has a 70% chance of success instead of 92% leaves himself open to charges if the patient subsequently requires an amputation. Maybe so, though in today's state of ethical confusion the law may agree with Dr. McKee. Employers are obliged to wrest car keys from inebriated receptionists, but doctors can let unrepentant smokers lose their limbs.
I was still a smoker in the early 1970s when I went to a physician with a chest complaint. He said he wouldn't even look at me as long as I continued to smoke.
"In your waiting room," I said to him, "there's a Hippocratic oath framed on the wall. You seem to have sworn to treat the sick. Your oath doesn't say 'except smokers.'"
The doctor laughed and offered to examine me, but this was 30 years ago. I'm not sure how a similarly self-righteous medicine man, encouraged by the confused social ethics of our times, would respond today.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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