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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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The careful consideration of even minor interventions with negligible potential harms like this by medical ethics always struck me as admirable. As for why this was discussed for dementia patients and not parenting, I think medical ethics simply cared way more about the details of what they were doing. There's nothing fundamental stopping a similarly detailed childraising ethics field from existing, but it just doesn't.

All this makes it even sadder that medical ethics completely jumped the shark in 2020 and thoroughly discredited itself as a field in doing so.

I have an extremely jaundiced view of medical ethics as a field, seeing it as drag on progress that invisibly kills a hundred people for every dozen it saves.

To the extent I obey its dictats (the ones that haven't been enshrined over a century of normal practise) it's because I'm legally compelled to, or because I don't want to get into trouble with my licensing body.

I'm not saying it's 100% bad, but there's no way of fighting to only adhere to the parts of it that make sense or are good for us.

There's nothing fundamental stopping a similarly detailed childraising ethics field from existing, but it just doesn't.

Yes there is- parents would completely ignore them. Medical ethicists continue talking because doctors and hospitals listen.

Medical ethicists continue talking because doctors and hospitals listen.

The events of the past few years would suggest otherwise.

Assuming you're referring to covid hysteria, the medical ethicists seemed on board with it.