Not happy with inconveniencing customers at the checkouts who suddenly find an assistant is refusing to handle booze on religious grounds, the supermarket chain Sainsbury, it seems, is allowing pharmacy staff not to sell the morning-after pill.
Some Muslim checkout assistants are being allowed to call for the help of another member of staff if a customer brings alcohol through the checkout aisle – adding to checkout waiting times.
Now we learn that some Muslim medical students are are refusing to attend lectures or answer questions on booze-related subjects, or on sexually transmitted diseases, because of “offence” to their “faith”.
“A small number of Muslim medical students have even refused to treat patients of the opposite sex,” says a story in the UK’s Sunday Times. “One male student was prepared to fail his final exams rather than carry out a basic examination of a female patient.”
Well, that’s at least one fewer nutty doctor we’re likely to encounter.
While the General Medical Council and British Medical Association stress they don’t approve of such superstition-induced nonsense (although their language was somewhat less intemperate!), they have confirmed that this sort of thing is going on.
Even some Muslims believe these students are reneging on their professional responsibilities and are taking things too far.
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, of the Islamic Medical Association, says: ‘To learn about alcohol, to learn about sexually transmitted disease, to learn about abortion, it gives us more evidence to campaign against it. There is a difference between learning and practising.”
But why do they need to learn more about it to campaign against it? Either it’s their religious duty or it isn’t. One thing is likely: it will be hardly surprising if patients want to know about their doctors’ religious beliefs if they’re being treated for these kinds of problem.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 9th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Those claiming exemption from the normal duties of the job they have signed up for and then claim they are doing it for their faith are in fact doing the opposite: they are acting out of bad faith.
I am a vegetarian but if I accepted a job at Sainsbury’s, I would know that part of my job would be handling meat products. If, having taken the job, I refused to handle meat products I would no doubt be given short shrift, and rightly so.
If your potential employer misleads you as to what jobs you will be expected to do, that is different but no person capable of stacking shelves or working a check-out can be unaware that supermarkets sell alcohol and that part of an employee’s job is to handle it. To take the job and then refuse to handle alcohol is simply dishonest.
I can understand that someone might become sensitive to certain issues while already employed and find this a dilemma. The honest way to resolve the problem is to resign from the job.
Supermarkets sell alcohol, chemists sell contraceptives. To take a job with either and then refuse to sell the products is deceitful.
October 9th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I completely agree with Silvertiger regaring the Sainsbury’s employees. Accepting a job that you’re not willing to perform is unfair to the employer and the customers, and they should resign, immediately – or ask for a transfer to frozen food section (pharamcists included).
With all due respect to grocery workers, the issue with doctors is much more serious.
Medical students who fail to complete their education on religious grounds should obviouly fail their education and be unable to become licensed doctors.
What I have to wonder though is: Will they go “practice” medicine somewhere without a license, perhaps on their own nutty, insular community?
Perhaps universities should find a way to weed these people out in their first semester and not waste everybody’s time and not potentially have an unqualified partially-educated quack “caring” for the ignorant.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I agree that the “doctor problem” is serious but also that there are points to consider.
In the case of a medical student who fails to attend courses or examinations, I assume that such a one will fail to qualify and will not be allowed to practise and will thus cease to be a problem. His major sin will be that he might have denied a place at medical college to a student who would have completed his studies successfully.
In the case of qualified doctors who refuse to treat people with sexual diseases or diseases resulting from alcohol abuse, I intuitively feel this is wrong (if you practise as a doctor then you should perform all the duties of a doctor, not just those you prefer) but I do notice that in the UK, treatment is already withheld in some circumstances. For example, some hospital doctors will not perform operations such as heart transplants on smokers. The difference is that this is a practical decision (a smoker is unlikely to benefit from a replacement heart as much as a non-smoker) whereas the former is a personal moral scruple on the part of the doctor. Is there some similarity here with doctors who feel unable to turn off life-support systems of patients in a permanent vegetative state even when a court order has been obtained? Or doctors who feel unable to perform an abortion?
Without regard to examining female patients, I know that some male doctors are fearful of being falsely accused by women of improper advances. One doctor I know prefers to pass women for examination on to a female colleague or at least to have a chaperon present during the examination.
Patients are given the right to elect to be treated by a doctor of the same gender. Should doctors be given the complementary right, i.e. the right to examine only patients of the same gender? My feeling is that doctors (of both sexes) should be above such petty considerations but when you are dealing with human beings, as opposed to idealized philosophical models, all sorts of complicating factors arise.
Such considerations are probably more than the original story deserves. I suspect that the medical students and doctors refusing to study or treat certain patients or diseases were not acting from carefully considered moral or philosophical reasons but were attempting to score points in the debate about religion in a rather crude and obvious manner. I think the same is true of those shop assistants who refuse to sell certain goods claimed to be “offensive” to their religious sensibilities.
December 1st, 2007 at 4:46 pm
This does not only apply to doctors. In Sainsbury’s pharmacies the “morning after” pill may be refused to customers by a Pharmacist who does not agree with its use. Since many new supermarket pharmacies are open until late at night this may mean a trip to A&E of many miles for some customers because there is nowhere else open.