In China medical workers are honoured by the public with the title “Angels in White? but in some places this title is giving way to “Wolves in White?

This phenomenon is partly due to the fact that hospitals charge too much and medical treatment has become too expensive for patients to afford, but it is more due to the fact people are becoming more and more disgusted with hospital mismanagement and medical immorality.

Recently a particularly nasty case of medical immorality was disclosed. It was reported that in Nanjiang County, of Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, a non-native woman who had fallen off a cliff was rescued by firemen and sent to the Traditional Chinese Medical Hospital of Nanjiang County, where doctors conducted a physical examination. After the check-up the hospital director Lin Jin’an concluded that this woman “might be a beggar? and he gave permission for deputy director He Wenliang and Jia Zhengyong to take the patient out and drop her off in a deserted place, leaving the woman to die which she did the next morning.

The hospital chiefs were first detained by police for alleged murder and then officially arrested on the charge of “causing death by negligence?

Instances of medical immorality are numerous. The few examples of medical immorality that get reported are likely to be just a small part of what has actually occurred, or in other words, “a tip of the iceberg? Many people grieve over this tragedy, saying that hospital medical staff are obliged to help patients who are in need regardless of occupation or position, so how could they turn a patient away simply because he or she might not have money to cover the treatment?

Therefore, they think the hospital’s medical and nursing staff should be condemned for their lack of ethics, for being bent on nothing but profit and totally devoid of all moral principles in their behaviour.

Others argue the opposite, stating that being profit-making organizations, hospitals need to make money so they can pay their employees. For this reason it would not be fair to ask doctors and nurses to perform their “sacred duty?whilst ignoring their well-being.

We can see that this incident of unethical medical practice is not an isolated incident, or even one of “a few bad apples?

This episode may, in a way, serve as a good example of the negative consequences of the prevalence of money worship and the loss of moral values. In a world of crass materialism money has become the main indicator of a person’s success, and the main motivation of a huge majority of people.

Medical workers are members of our society, and their value systems are largely consistent with social norms. In a social climate like the one we currently live in, doctors and nurses are inevitably affected by social values and norms of conduct.

Medical services are undeniably a form of consumption. The hospital or clinic is a provider of health care and the patients are consumers who have to pay for services provided. However, patients are not ordinary consumers. The medical service deals with people not when they are healthy, but when they are sick and dying.

Therefore being a doctor is not only a professional job, but also a job of conscience and responsibility to patients. A doctor should have the heart of a Buddha, saving the afflicted and saving the distressed like a Spirit of Great Kindness and Great Mercy.

There is a need to be mindful, as it clearly appears that the worship of money is leading to a gradual erosion of medical ethics. There is also a need to be mindful of the underlying indifference to human lives.

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