The conflict between traditional beliefs and the responsibility of parents to bring up their children in America with modern medicine and health standards has recently been brought to the public’s attention.
Boston University Medical Center doctors planned to treat a terminally ill infant, the son of African Muslims, by burning small points onto his back, according to a Sept. 15 Boston Globe article. The boy died before the procedure could be carried out, but the debate lingers.
The BUMC Boston Healing Landscape Project was designed to serve primarily as a research center for those interested in meshing modern and traditional approaches to medicine, and it rarely engages in actual medical practice. The project says it makes immigrant families with different approaches to healing comfortable with modern medicine by integrating faith and healing rituals with scientific procedures. This admirable service to the community is to be applauded, but willingness to play accomplice in scientifically unfounded treatments that bend the rules of medical ethics should be scorned.
It is important for Western doctors to be aware of the hesitancy some people from different cultural backgrounds may have in an intimidating hospital setting. Doctors may, and should when it is possible, safe and appropriate, accommodate the wishes of foreign patients. While doctors may not understand the herbal or faith rituals some patients insist upon, they should accommodate treatments that are consistent with the ethical standards of the medical community.
While it may be acceptable in some cultures to burn a child’s back to perform a healing ritual, such actions could be construed as abuse by U.S. legal standards.
It is important doctors understand how other cultures approach healing. The Boston Healing Landscape Project saves lives and eases pain when it ensures ethnic patients receive care they and their families are comfortable with. The Project does a disservice to the community when it plans to carry out medical practices that, like burns, do physical harm to a person and are not recognized by the medical community as being beneficial.
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