14% of U.S. physicians believe that their personal religious views should determine which perfectly legal medical treatments they offer

First, Do No Evangelizing

Should the medical care you receive from your doctor depend upon the quality of the available treatments? Or should it depend upon the doctor’s religious beliefs or political ideology? These are questions we should ask in light of Surgeon General nominee Dr. James Holsinger’s recent appearance before the Senate and because, as a country, we have become infatuated with the idea that religious devotion is good for our health. ...
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This conflict between religious belief and medical science, it appears, is not uncommon, making it all the more dangerous. Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 14% of U.S. physicians, representing different regions of the country and different medical specialties, believe that their personal religious views rather than the needs of their patients should determine which perfectly legal medical treatments they offer and, more distressing still, that they are under no particular obligation to disclose this bias to their patients or to refer them to other physicians who will offer the treatment. Ethicists have noted that because doctors have state licenses giving them exclusive rights to practice medicine, they have an obligation to deliver medical care to all those who seek it, not just to those who share their religious convictions. That means understanding the best scientific evidence about which factors contribute to health and which ones don’t and practicing medicine accordingly. It means not permitting personal values, religious or otherwise, to supersede the best interests of patients.
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... Already, the Christian Medical and Dental Association, a professional society with more than 17,000 members, publishes a handbook that instructs physicians on how to use their practices to evangelize. According to a recent article in the Des Moines Register, the Iowa City VA Hospital repeatedly attempted to convert a Jewish veteran to Christianity during hospitalizations over the past two year. In 2004, CBS News reported on a Colorado orthopedic surgeon who “requests” that patients pray with him while they are gowned and supine on the gurney, ready to be wheeled into surgery. Because medical patients very often are in pain and fearful, they are especially vulnerable to manipulation by physicians who, even in these days of medical consumerism, retain positions of authority in the physician-patient relationship. When doctors capitalize on this authority to pursue a religious rather than a medical agenda, they violate ethical standards of patient care.
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