Truth in Unity - Conscience and the Law

Philip Ney, MD

© 2006

Maybe Shakespeare believed that conscience was for cowards, however, psychiatrists learned long ago that those without a conscience were psychopaths. It is also clear that those who are afraid to use their conscience give themselves away as cowardly. Call it whatever you may, everyone has a conscience. You may believe that conscience arose from religion or philosophy or history, but it is more likely that it is embedded in the instincts for group and individual survival.

We now know there are three, not four fundamental forces in the universe. Scientists are excited by the possibility of discovering the one force that unifies everything. Thus we must conclude that truth is unitary. Eventually conscience and science must agree.

Most doctors know of many cases such as this one. A teenager was brought to emergency by her mother, a nurse, who is convinced the child is deathly ill with septicemia. The good doctor orders the correct, reliable lab tests, which show nothing amiss. So she is sent home. Shortly thereafter, the distraught mother brings her back and insists she be hospitalized. She is, but dies within six hours, of septicemia. We older doctors were taught not to rely upon lab tests, but on clinical observation, experience, wisdom, instinct that can tell us something is drastically wrong even when the science of radiology, biochemistry, etc. show nothing abnormal. You may call this inner awareness prescience, or conscience, but it was every good physician’s and every wise man’s guide long before science and law became so important. After all, which came first? “The law,” said Eichman, “I only did what was ‘legally permitted,’” before he was executed for transgressing a higher moral law. “Science,” said Darwin, and everyone bowed so low, they set aside their critical faculties. How is it possible “eminent scientists” didn’t realize that after the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics, evolution was impossible, if not ridiculous?

Long before science was able to show the destructiveness of cigarette smoking, Christians forbade their children from indulging on the basis of conscience. If you were to be guided by good science, you would realize that 99.5% of abortions are not indicated for health reasons and have no proven therapeutic value, but rather, accumulating evidence shows their harmful effects. If only doctors had listened to their conscience more closely, millions of women would not now be suffering. Do you know of any long-term study of families that have contributed to the euthanasia of someone near and dear? I can assert from many clinical cases that husbands, wives, children, guardians who have requested or agreed to ‘pulling the plug’, or removing the intravenous or nasogastric feeding tube, have instinctually driven guilt which complicates their grieving. Grief thus complicated often becomes pathological, and frequently that results in difficult to treat depression. The best evidence to date shows that the more sex education, the more sexual activity. The earlier the sex education, the earlier the sexual activity, and therefore the increased demand for contraceptives which, against their conscience, doctors are increasingly pressured into prescribing, even while there is growing evidence of adverse long term effects both from estrogens and the implicit permission to be sexually active.

Therefore, being a pragmatist, I will carefully listen to my conscience. Practically speaking, I will be guided by my conscience, and then the best science available, and then possibly the law. Conscience will probably keep me out of trouble with everyone but those who don’t have one, or don’t think the conscience needs to be listened to.