Word: basic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...basic premise of medicine that doctors should be healers and care givers; that they must work for their patients' well-being; that if they cannot cure, they should at least do no harm. When they took their Hippocratic oath, they promised, "I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel . . ." But the plight of the incurably ill has challenged all these premises and left doctors and nurses deeply divided over their duties to the dying...
...they take often depend more on circumstance than on moral certainty. How far is the patient from death? How great is the pain? How clear the will? Does the patient just want to be left alone, or is he asking to be killed? The Cruzan case has raised the basic medical issue of whether doctors must continue to treat patients they cannot cure. In its amicus brief to the Supreme Court, the American Academy of Neurology argues that the doctor's duty is to continue treating unconscious patients as long as there is some chance of improvement, which Nancy Cruzan...
SOME articles in Peninsula attempt rational defenses of their moral disapproval. One piece goes to great lengths to argue that homosexuality and contraception are immoral because they are "inescapably unnatural." Abortion, the author argues, is "an act contrary to nature in its most basic sense...
...most of the articles don't even aim for rational persuasion--fallacious or not. The basic thrust of the magazine is not rigorous debate, but frightened reaction against "moral decay and degradation...
McDonald gives a version of the fallacious naturalistic argument that is more consistent with Peninsula's philosophical underpinnings. "Bad things really do happen when one violates basic laws of nature...gonorrhea, AIDS, and drug overdose...