Physicians' strikes--a rejoinder

Abstract

The author, a physician, rejects a previous defence of a doctors' strike. There is little justification for strikes in general, still less for doctors' strikes, he claims. Should not doctors rather 'stand above the common herd' and set an example, he asks. Furthermore the whole idea of strikes in which a third and innocent party is deliberately punished in order to apply pressure on someone else is a 'a bizarre ethic indeed' and not to his knowledge justified under any ethical theory.

KIE: The author, a physician, rejects the ethical defense of doctors' strikes presented by Brecher and by Grosskopt, Buckman, and Garty in the June 1985 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. He contends that, in a democratic society where physicians are free to resign their positions, strikes which impose suffering on an innocent third party, the patient, violate the physician patient relationship and cannot be justified by any ethical theory.