The New Face Of Medicine

Dr. C.L. Gray Interview

The New Face of Medicine

I was in my residency for internal medicine in upstate New York, and I read a book by Peter Singer, Rethinking Life, and Death. He struggles with the rising cost of healthcare where he proposes a solution of infanticide where an infant isn’t determined human until four weeks of age. This isn’t abortion but afterbirth abortion. I questioned myself, ‘how on earth did he come up with that position’? While doing my “grand rounds,” I was addressing a group of researchers who had a very different belief system than my own and had to prepare for a rebuttal to Dr. Singer’s position but still able to reach my audience.

KR: So, I assume that you had to be clever to persuade a disgruntled audience of Singer followers to see the light?DR. G: My research of 50,000 pages of reading took me back to a debate in Ancient Greece, where I discovered the methodologies of the heralded philosophers Plato and the “Father of Medicine,” Hippocrates. Plato states the role of the physician is to treat the healthy, those who are producing for society. If you’re elderly, sick, or a burden on society, then you could be killed or let die.