Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 15, 1994 TAG: 9411160027
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SUSAN HIGHTOWER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHARDSON, TEXAS LENGTH: Medium
The Christian Medical & Dental Society is an interdenominational organization of about 9,000 doctors and dentists.
``The bottom line is, we need to change the physicians, the nurses, the people that provide the care,'' said Dr. David Stevens, the new general director of the society.
``Physicians need to be more than just people that provide physical healing, but also those who can give spiritual counseling,'' he said.
The society organizes volunteer medical work around the world, supports missionaries and encourages medical students and doctors to practice their faith, on the job and off.
The group also formulates bioethical platforms that place it at the heart of some of today's most controversial issues.
The society opposes euthanasia, surrogate motherhood and abortion, except to save a woman's life. While it has no official position on birth control, a doctor writes in the current issue of its magazine that physicians should not prescribe birth control pills for unmarried women.
The 63-year-old society has kept a low profile, but the group now wants to increase its membership. While the society stresses it is not a lobbying organization, it also wants to make its voice heard.
Stevens, 43, who took over as general director of the society in August, is charged with the task.
Former bosses and society board members praise Stevens as a ``visionary'' with administrative and managerial strengths for an organization that sorely needs them.
``He's got fire in his belly, he's alive and has all kinds of ideas,'' said Dr. Robert Scheidt, the society's president.
Each year, the Christian Medical & Dental Society, which raises its $3 million annual budget from dues and donations, sends 1,500 doctors, dentists, nurses and volunteers on about 50 different volunteer medical programs for two weeks or more. The group also is trying to encourage doctors to donate their services more in the United States' inner cities and impoverished rural areas.
``I think medicine is a natural outreach of the Christian church,'' Stevens says.
``When people come into a physician's office, they're thinking about serious things and they're ready for change in the way they behave, in the lifestyles. Christian physicians are in an ideal place to share more than just pills, more than just surgery, but to share something that means more to them than their profession. That's their faith in Jesus Christ,'' he said.
However, some consumer medical advocates and bioethicists said they believe physicians should let patients know beforehand if they will not carry out practices that are considered the medical standard, whatever the religious, moral or philosophical reason.
``The issue becomes one of disclosure. What I think they have to be sure to do is let their patients know what the value basis is they operate from,'' said Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Arthur Levin, executive director of the Center for Medical Consumers in New York, calls it ``a buyer beware situation.''
``I think if these folks are practicing in the general population, they should be warning their prospective patients, one, that the scope of their practice is limited by the practitioner's religious beliefs, and articulate how that happens - whatever they won't do or will do based on religious belief rather than medical appropriateness,'' he said.
Spirituality can be a powerful tool for physicians seeking to reassure their patients, said Dr. Norman Fost, director of a program in medical ethics at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, citing studies showing a correlation between religious beliefs and healing.
``Religion is a positive force in most people's lives, physicians included. And there certainly should be no objection to physicians being religious people and being supportive of religion as an aid in healing and in helping their patients get through difficult illnesses and problems,'' Fost said.
``If you're 15 years old and sexually active, it's not very helpful to have a doctor who has a religious objection to birth control. That can be very threatening to your whole life.''
by CNB