Medical Futility Undermines Our Pluralistic Society and Threatens, among Other Things, the Free Exercise of Religion
Some maintain that religious and medical goals are inextricably intertwined and therefore that medical futility interferes with the free exercise of religion. Post[57] argues that approximately one fifth of the New Testament gospels describe the healing of physical or mental illness and the resurrection of the dead and that “even in mainstream Protestant churches, the belief in miraculous healing exists.”
Post's argument persuades us that religion and contemporary western medicine should be regarded as independent activities that seek the goal of healing in different ways. In the gospel stories, healing is usually achieved not through medical treatments but by the laying on of hands, so that “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, [and] the dead are raised” (Luke 7:22). Physicians are mentioned only in a description of how they failed to heal “a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any.” The woman's bleeding was immediately staunched by touching the border of Jesus's garment (Luke 8:43-44). In contrast, medical practitioners have been forced to acknowledge the limits of their art since the time of Hippocrates. Medicine, according to gospel teachings, cannot be expected to respond to the farthest reaches of religion in which revelation, faith, and miraculous healing (including the restoration of life to the dead) are invoked. Miracles may be an important goal of prayer for many patients, but they should not be imposed on physicians as a goal of medical practice. Indeed, the very meaning of “miracle” depends on the premise that “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18:27).
We do not resist when patients, families, and members of a religious faith choose to engage in meaningful religious and cultural activities; indeed, we respectfully encourage these actions. However, just as educators in the United States are not obligated to teach creationism in response to religious fundamentalists, western medical practitioners should not be expected to act contrary to personal or professional practice standards in response to persons who seek divine cures[58].
