All ethics has a religious dimension. This paper considers how specific Christian insights concerning death, suffering, human nature and human creatureliness can help to expose more fully the moral issues at stake in some of the dilemmas faced by doctors. It ends by acknowledging the crushing burden of decision-making which rests on many in the medical profession, and indicates the importance of religious resources in dealing with this.
KIE: The Archbishop of York, participating in a General Medical Council medical ethics education conference, suggests that all ethics, including medical ethics, has a theological dimension. Acknowledging that physicians often feel pressured to deal with medical dilemmas in a purely pragmatic way, he argues that the theological dimension can open up ethical problems and balance individual and technical considerations with human and spiritual ones. Habgood cites suffering and death, the care of handicapped newborns, the allocation of health care resources, reproductive technologies, and genetic intervention as areas of medical concern in which theological insight and awareness of a greater power can make a difference to patients and physicians.