Response to Wade Robison

“What students and faculty alike need is an understanding of how morality enters into their professional lives in ways different from how it enters into our ordinary lives.” This view, which informs most of Wade’s paper, is precisely the view that it is important to challenge. Wade is correct that moral judgments must be based upon knowledge of the facts of the case, but surprisingly he writes as if this is true only of moral judgments that are made about people’s activities in their professional lives. But I know that Wade cannot really believe that it is acceptable to make moral judgments in ordinary life without knowing all of the morally relevant facts. Maybe Wade was traumatized by his encounter with the physician who seemed to equate acting morally with doing “everything by the book.” My experience with physicians has been nothing like Wade’s. I was on the Dartmouth-Hitchcock ethics committee for more than 20 years, and participated in many consultations that doctors requested. In fact, my experience was almost the exact opposite of Wade’s experience. I remember one consultation requested by a physician who was having difficulties in deciding which of four alternatives he should choose. After talking with him for some time we agreed that two of the alternatives were not morally acceptable. He then asked me which of the two other alternatives he should choose. I replied that from our conversation it seemed as if both of the remaining alternatives were morally acceptable. He persisted, but I told him that he had a more intimate knowledge of the situation than I did and that he was better qualified to decide between these two morally acceptable alternatives. When I refused to pick one of the alternatives as the morally best, he became annoyed and said, “I didn’t come to you for an ethics lesson, I came here to be told what to do.” On second thought perhaps my physician also was trying to do