Opinion: Bioethicists Should Not Control Your Body

Opinion: Bioethicists Should Not Control Your Body

By Joe Bennett

There has been an awful lot of heated discussion recently regarding the question of body autonomy in recent years. From enforced vaccinations to abortions, the world cannot seem to agree universally on what even defines the body, let alone decide what freedoms you are allowed to exercise concerning it. The crux of many of these arguments fall down to concerns regarding the harm, or perceived harm that is caused to others. Those opposed to abortion, and those in favour of vaccines argue that body autonomy is secondary to the welfare of others, and as such there is a limit to what one should be able to do concerning their own bodies. Now don’t worry, I’m not about to kick either of those hornet nests, for today I am here to ruffle the feathers of only one group, and that is bioethicists!

Now I might hear you ask what exactly is a bioethicist? Depending on who you ask you may get several different answers, many of them flattering and many of them rather rude. In essence a bioethicist is someone who is dedicated to upholding ethical standards in the field of medicine. Their job is to analyse the moral and ethical implications of medical decisions in hope of averting harm. Those with a working knowledge of ethics might already have questioned that last sentence, as what exactly is defined as morally right or wrong differ near universally, so already we are building our premise upon sand so to speak. Built upon sand the concept may be, bioethicists are widely utilised within the medical field and will be frequently consulted by healthcare professionals in an attempt to uphold ethical standards, or simply to avoid getting sued, depending on who you ask.

So what do bioethicists have to do with body autonomy? Well on the surface bioethicists are champions of body autonomy. They will vehemently defend the rights of individuals to refuse treatments for whatever reason you like, and they will also insist patients give informed consent whenever possible for all medical procedures performed upon them. This has been fairly standard practice for modern medicine for a very long time, and is important for the wellbeing of patients. However, maintaining the identity of being the thin red tape between the general public and the reincarnation of Josef Mengele has caused bioethicists to acquire a disposition of believing themselves to be moral arbiters and caretakers of all that they behold. This has ironically resulted in what the general public would often describe as being remarkably unethical and illogical decisions, many of which history will probably not look kindly upon.

As mentioned previously, bioethicists have championed the rights for individuals to have informed consent for medical treatments, but what is often brushed under the rug is that not only do they require your consent for a medical procedure, you also require their consent to do what you wish with your own body. Now naturally the bioethicists will not see it this way, but once you boil down what exactly is transpiring it becomes obvious what is happening and what their particular stance is on this matter. Let’s take an example to illustrate my point. Imagine you are a terminally ill cancer patient, and you are beyond all hope of current medical treatments, however there is an experimental drug which has not yet been approved for use which could potentially save your life. You know it’s not been shown to be either effective or safe, but yet there is a chance that it could save your life and you would like to try it. Unfortunately for you, the bioethicist doesn’t agree. They believe that you should not be allowed to take the drug, and therefore it is illegal. Why? Because it could be dangerous, obviously! And we wouldn’t want something bad to happen to you now, would we? You know, besides the whole ‘dying of cancer’ thing.

Now there must be more to this, right? Surely they have a good reason for this decision? Well the bioethicist certainly thinks so. In fact they typically get paid extravagant salaries in order to rattle off entire dissertations as to why holding back scientific progress and personal choice is the morally correct thing to do. The typical argument against allowing individuals the right to take experimental drugs is that they believe that drug companies will use desperate individuals as essentially laboratory rats, in which they can bypass normal clinical regulations and utilise the dying as coerced test subjects.

Now while I do appreciate this point of view, we have to acknowledge a simple premise that this is based on the idea that one person is making decisions about what happens to another’s body, which is justified by the belief that one knows what is best for the other. Essentially, bioethicists have crowned themselves as benevolent dictators that can decide for us what is best for us, because the silly mindless peasantry cannot possibly come to the correct conclusion for themselves. Could you imagine if we were regulated like this in our daily lives? If what we ate, drank, and what we did for fun were dictated by what was best for our health? We actually can see examples of such things throughout history such as prohibition in the United States, but such laws were rarely justified due to preventing harm to one’s self. In fact even today narcotics are chiefly regulated with the justification of what harm they may cause to others. Yet strangely the prospect of life saving medical treatments which has only the potential to save or shorten your own life is the line of autonomy which bioethicists think is a step too far. But, these are the same people who will support abortions because a fetus is just a collection of cells, but will forbid experimentation on human embryos because it’s a human being, so we shouldn’t always expect logical consistencies from such organisations.

But what if they’re right? What if they are doing what is right to prevent harm? Is it not possible that by preventing the use of experimental medical procedures they are preventing human suffering? The answer is simple, yes. Preventing the use of experimental procedures does inevitably prevent some suffering from occurring. This is undeniable, as it is inevitable that experimental, unproven therapies will have negative, potentially fatal side effects. But do you know what else has potentially negative and potentially fatal side effects? Stepping out of my front door every morning. Nothing in this world comes without risks associated with it, and certainly nothing that we would refer to as a freedom comes without consequences. There’s nothing legally stopping me from drinking five litres of whiskey every day and dying of liver disease at forty, and in fact if many bioethicists had their way there would be a law against me doing exactly that. Despite the benevolent authoritarians, most bioethicists would admit that the freedom of choice is integral to modern society, however they are reluctant to look too deeply into the mirror for fear of what they might see.