One of the most intriguing questions in medical ethics is whether individual physicians ought to be able to refuse conscientiously to provide services that patients seek. The issue requires us to delve into difficult problems, such as the extent to which physicians must subordinate their interests to those of their current or prospective patients, and how essential the services physicians object to are as new medical technologies develop. Despite the difficulty that surrounds this issue, many bioethicists—like Dan Brock and Mark Wicclair—have tried to address it in a single journal article. But Holly Fernandez Lynch is an exception. In Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise, she gives conscientious objection in medicine the book-length treatment that it deserves.
One of the most intriguing questions in medical ethics is whether individual physicians ought to be able to refuse conscientiously to provide services that patients seek. The issue requires us to delve into difficult problems, such as the extent to which physicians must subordinate their interests to those of their current or prospective patients, and how essential the services physicians object to are as new medical technologies develop. Despite the difficulty that surrounds this issue, many bioethicists—like Dan Brock and Mark Wicclair—have tried to address it in a single journal article. But Holly Fernandez Lynch is an exception. In Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise, she gives conscientious objection in medicine the book-length treatment that it deserves.
Carolyn McLeod, "An Institutional Solution to Conflicts of Conscience in Medicine," Hastings Center Report 40, no. 6 (2010): 41-42.