Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Caton on March 23, 2011 at 11:02am

I would agree with DSE that a fundamentalist probably isn't an effective practitioner.  That said, I know 1-2 dozen out theists at my institution (all three Abrahamics) and in every cause I would take my future children to them with a medical problem, because I've seen them to be conscientious, observant, hard-working people who want to be good doctors.  The key of course is I think they would be that even if they weren't Catholic or Shi'a or whatever, which leads you to question where the source of their moral behavior is really their religion or their basic character.  They're also not fundamentalists.

As for what would concern me most about the medical practice of a fundamentalist, rather than worry about whether their differential is missing something because they don't believe in evolution, I would think more often the problem is that they're withholding treatments from the patient without informing them or otherwise making decisions in a way not consistent with what the patient would want.  You may have seen the paper in the last year or so showing that very religious patients are more likely than the less religious to use aggressive life-extending measures, and you can't help but wonder if that extends to physicians, regardless of the patient's request - and of course many patients won't even verbalize desires until prompted be a physician, and that's when they feel the physician isn't judging them.

Permalink Reply by Avicenna on April 16, 2011 at 2:07pm

How do they reconcile the evidence of DNA if they think we are descended from Noah?

Practitioner? They can be. A lot of medicine is rote memory. Plenty of religious people become doctors.

Just ignore them and carry on with your work. Questions will come up that they cannot reconcile particularly in genetics.