Thanks to a long overdue public inquiry here in the UK, shocking stories of how NHS doctors recklessly gave patients blood contaminated with viruses including HIV and hepatitis have been emerging in recent years. One of the most painful cases was at a special school for children with haemophilia, where well-meaning but catastrophically misguided doctors wilfully experimented on children without consent using these contaminated blood products, leading to most of the young people’s deaths. In this episode we consider this as the latest in a long history of murky scandals in medical trials, and the profoundly Christian underpinnings of truly ethical medical research. Has healthcare changed today so that such astonishingly reckless and paternalistic care could not happen again? And how as believers can we handle the enormous power given to professionals such as doctors with an appropriate Christlike and cross-shaped humility, knowing as flawed humans we can always be wrong?
In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.
Thanks to a long overdue public inquiry here in the UK, shocking stories of how NHS doctors recklessly gave patients blood contaminated with viruses including HIV and hepatitis have been emerging in recent years. One of the most painful cases was at a special school for children with haemophilia, where well-meaning but catastrophically misguided doctors wilfully experimented on children without consent using these contaminated blood products, leading to most of the young people’s deaths. In this episode we consider this as the latest in a long history of murky scandals in medical trials, and the profoundly Christian underpinnings of truly ethical medical research. Has healthcare changed today so that such astonishingly reckless and paternalistic care could not happen again? And how as believers can we handle the enormous power given to professionals such as doctors with an appropriate Christlike and cross-shaped humility, knowing as flawed humans we can always be wrong?
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