Playing God and Invoking a Perspective Term Paper

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Verhey, Allen. "Playing God and Invoking a Perspective." Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 20 (1995): 347-364.

Any physician of a moral and ethical frame of mind would be reflexively offended if a patient, or the loved one of a patient, accused that physician of 'playing God.' But what does this phrase mean? According to Allen Verhey's essay on medicine, modern bioethics, and "Playing God and Invoking a Perspective," the phrase "humans should not play God" has been used quite often by individuals of a particular, naturalistic ideological frame of mind to argue against using of supposedly unnatural forms of medicine, technology, and the use of related forms of biotechnology to sustain human life, or to ameliorate the sufferings of human life. The idea that physicians, scientists and medical practitioners should not play God has even been used to argue against such processes as cloning and genetically modified food because these methodologies are considered unnatural.

Who and what, Verhey asks, is this human-generated notion of 'God' that has become so venerated, in popular discourse, whose methods we should not attempt to play at? The core notion behind the phrase 'humans should not play God,' used in the vein delineated above, is that humans must respect natural processes and thus interferences by physicians are inappropriate and contrary to the natural will of the divine law. Whatever will be, must be, whatever is natural -- that is, whatever is untouched -- is inherently better than what can be accomplished by human interference. Taken to its logical extreme such an argument could be used against vaccinations and antibiotics, as well as the extremes of modern medicine.

The notions of God, and of not interfering or "playing" at the works of God, are often drawn in a fuzzy fashion, with even fuzzier logic. This naturalistic notion of what is God's realm and what is science and humanity's realm seems to be drawn along the lines of what makes the human advocate of 'not playing God' as uncomfortable in the present day. However, technology is always shifting and changing.

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Conceivably, many years ago, playing God could be putting fluoride in the water, or pasteurization -- anything that changed the natural, chemical composition of a natural product, even if these unnatural, human created processes and chemicals improved the fate of humanity and the fabric of human daily life.

As a further warning to become over fixated upon a narrow definition of the phrase 'playing God,' it is important to note that these same words have also been conversely used to suggest just the opposite. People should not 'play God,' say individuals who state that that mercy killings -- the so-called 'pulling the plug,' on terminally and hopelessly ill patients -- or even not providing life-sustaining and life-generating means of survival is a kind of playing God. To play God, in such a line of thought, is to say that Teri Shaivo should die and be taken off life support, because she cannot speak for herself and say she does not wish to be subject to heroic measure to sustain her life.

Also, according to such a line of thinking, a doctor who refuses to allow a woman to make use of currently existing reproductive technology is playing God, by deciding who will be able to have children, and who will not, based upon the moral judgments of the physician -- that the woman is too old, or not economically or emotionally capable or raising a child in the 'correct' fashion, as deemed by the doctor. If the technology exists, the woman should be able to use it.

It is fascinating that how the same phrase, can invoke an entirely different kind of reasoning Verhey comments. The same phrase that has been used by other authors to argue against extraordinary or life-prolonging medical equipment can also be used for the use of such equipment, even though the equipment is hardly God-created. Presumably, the theological, as opposed to legal or scientific argument of such proponents of the uncritical….....

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