Alice Dreger Quotes

The growing professional disciplines of medical ethics and bioethics have had a profound impact on researchers, bedside doctors, associations of physicians, and government.

No doctor should ever have to call an insurance man to ask permission to treat a patient who is standing right there.

A Patients' Bill of Rights is at the center of our national existence.

The Patients' Bill of Rights is necessary to guarantee that health care will be available for those who are paying for insurance. It's a part of the overall health care picture.

Bioethics has hardened into an activist ideology that pervades the medical world, the schools, and government.

Bioethics is a very, very important field. As we get more and more in the arena of understanding science and getting better opportunities, the fact that you can do things with biological sciences that have an impact on a human being means you must have ethical standards.

Long regarded as central to the contemporary understanding of medical ethics are four principles that must be satisfied in order to fulfill the requirements of moral decision-making. These principles are autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence.

Instead of the traditional emphasis on the sanctity of life, bioethics began to stress the quality of life, meaning that many damaged humans, young and old, don't qualify for personhood because their lives have lost value.

Patient autonomy is paramount to the oath that we take when we enter the profession of medicine. That is why I am appalled when the federal government gets between my patients and their right to the full range of medical information and complete access to health care.

I know from my constituency what is going on. Doctors that are told, begged, by mothers, 'Please don't write down that my child as asthma. Please lie and say it's bronchitis, because if you write down asthma, when my child turns 18 or 20 and has to get his or her own insurance, it will be a pre-existing condition.'

Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.

I'm strongly for a patient Bill of Rights. Decisions ought to be made by doctors, not accountants.

Medical decisions ought to be made by medical doctors—not insurance companies.

No health care provider may be penalized for discussing medically necessary or appropriate care with or on behalf of his or her patient.

… we are merely the servants of the public, in spite of our M.d. ’s and our hospital appointments

With 'Cardiac Arrest,' I wanted to show that there were times when doctors really didn't care.

We are trained to be medical doctors first and if you have to put neurosurgery aside to deal with the most vulnerable and susceptible patients, then that's what we'll do.

Obviously it's always hard when you tell a patient you can't help them, because maybe it's a physical constraint with the surgery, but in regards to telling a patient that they're not realistic and they're not appropriate psychological candidates, we're pretty used to it.

Logic cannot support the premise that health care is a right. Health care is a service that is administered by another human being with the requisite skills and knowledge. To claim that healthcare as a "right" is to claim a right to the services of the health-care provider. In effect, this means you are claiming a "right" to a portion of that person's life – both a portion of the time already spent developing his skills, and a portion of the time spent practicing those skills on you.

As a doctor who took care of patients for 25 years, I saw the problems with America's health care system every day.

I don't ever approach anything from the issue first, so I can't tell you that I've thought about tackling universal health care. I'd have to have some great story I'd want to tell, and then universal health care would become part of the way to tell that story.

Performing unconsented surgeries is considered battery because the patient can't voice their opinion - they're unconscious.

I was always taught at medical school that you should never do a test unless you could do something with the result.

I been going to the hospital since I was born, about 10 times a year, for about a week or two each time.

As a clinician, I would never want to be coercive in relation to a patient, nor do I harbor the illusion that as a physician I am capable of forcing someone to change their behavior, no matter how detrimental to their health.