In Friday’s editorial “Pill pastor,” The Lantern stated that, “A pharmacist’s only responsibility to a patient is his or her medical well-being. “While the statement itself is correct, the editorial omitted one very important responsibility that a pharmacist (or any human being, for that matter) has a responsibility to uphold and abide by his or her own moral code.
While Gene Herr, might be an inadequate pharmacist in the determination of Eckerd’s and a significant portion of the general population. Herr would be an inadequate person if he were to elevate the requirements of a mere job above his own moral code.
Morality is not something that a person can simply toss aside because his employer requires it. No employment manual, ruling, sentencing, or judgment should cause a person to voluntarily participate in what he considers to be immoral.
Herr’s “quest” was not to preserve an embryo; I’m sure he knew fully well that the customer could simply go to another pharmacy and fill their prescription there. Herr’s intentions were simply to satisfy his own conscience with respect to his actions. He chose not to be an accomplice to what he considered murder. That’s his choice, and he was willing to subject himself to the consequences of his actions in order to maintain a clean conscience for himself.
The last paragraph of the editorial is so full of empty rhetoric that I could fill an entire letter discussing its faults. However, it is not unscientific for a person to apply his moral code in the situations he finds himself in, nor is science (or any other endeavor) even remotely unbiased; the unequal distribution of research money indicates that quite well. Nor does a person suddenly become a “soldier for religion” when he refuses to participate in behavior he considers immoral.
Should Herr have been fired for what he did? Certainly, especially given the obligations stated in his employment manual. Do I respect him all the more because he knew that and still chose to abide by his moral code? Definitely.
Jeremy FincherSenior in computer science
