There’s something eerie about a physician committing a crime. Compassion and empathy are doctors’ job requirements after all.
A mechanic or an architect may have those qualities, either out of religious conviction or simply because he’s a nice person. But if he’s neither a believer nor particularly nice, no one is going to say he isn’t fit for the job.
It’s different for doctors. When a medic lacks compassion and empathy, and especially if his callousness leads him to a life of crime, somehow he’s more culpable than a mechanic or an architect would be under the circumstances. We expect higher moral standards from a man who took the Hippocratic oath.
That’s why David Mackereth, a top NHS doctor with 26 years’ experience, should count himself lucky. He committed a heinous crime and merely got sacked.
This testifies to the generous tolerance of modernity. At another time or in another place, the same transgression would send him down for a long stretch. Or, if the death penalty were still on the books, he’d get the chop.
By now you must be anxious to know what kind of crime put an end to such an illustrious career. I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, but do make sure you’re sitting down.
Dr Mackereth believes that – wait a moment, let me get hold of myself – one’s sex isn’t a matter of choice. How about that, have you ever heard anything so outrageous?
Not only that, but he insists on putting this belief, reactionary to the point of being fascist, into practice. Dr Mackereth denies his patients the right to sex self-identification. He obtusely refers to a person born with the XY chromosomes as a man and to one bearing XX chromosomes as a woman.
And he mangles the English language, its present version at any rate, by describing a man as a he and a woman as a she. Is it any wonder that the NHS described him as ‘unfit to work’. Unfit to live, more like it.
Rather than accepting his punishment with meek submission, Dr Mackereth dared to defend himself, invoking his Christian faith.
“I’m not attacking the transgender movement,” he said, “but I am defending my right to freedom of speech, and freedom of belief.
“I don’t think I should be compelled to use a specific pronoun. I’m not setting out to upset anyone. But if upsetting someone can lead to doctors being sacked then, as a society, we have to examine where we are going.”
How can an educated man get things so wrong? We have ample freedom of belief, with the little proviso that, if your belief happens to be Christian, you keep it to yourself and certainly don’t act on it – especially within the sanctuary of the NHS.
And we have more than enough freedom of speech – but not of any old speech. A Muslim may refuse to shake hands with a female client (a case from my own experience) or insist that all pork products be removed from a school canteen. How much more freedom do you need?
Do you also want a Christian to quote Genesis 5: 2 (“Male and female created he them…”) with impunity? Be reasonable now. This would be not freedom but anarchy, repudiating the authority of modernity altogether. That simply won’t do, will it now?
It won’t. That’s why Dr Mackereth was found to be in violation of modernity’s real Bible, the 2010 Equality Act. Off with his head.
Actually, if I were him, I wouldn’t have mentioned Christianity under the circumstances. After all, every master of rhetoric, from Socrates on, has taught that an argument should be couched in terms one’s audience can understand.
These days any overt reference to Christianity renders the audience not just uncomprehending but hostile. Thus insisting on the truth of one’s beliefs because the Bible says so is an admirable moral stand, but a guaranteed loser in a debate (or a sacking offence, as Dr Mackereth found out).
Mercifully, there’s seldom any need, especially when arguing about tangentially medical matters, such as transsexuality, abortion and euthanasia. Christianity has informed our civilisation on such matters, and its precepts held sway for so many centuries that they’re firmly implanted in Western thought – regardless of how egregiously modernity perverts and abuses it.
The sanctity of human life, for example, is originally a religious concept, but every secular legal or moral code has incorporated it as well. That’s why it’s possible to build an irrefutable intellectual argument against abortion and euthanasia without venturing outside common sense and sequential logic.
Because Christianity is true, it’s supported by a corpus of medical, scientific and legal knowledge to such an extent that it’s no longer necessary to refer to scripture. Purely, or rather seemingly, secular arguments can do the job for themselves.
In this case, Dr Mackereth could merely have cited reams of medical research proving beyond any doubt whatsoever that it’s impossible for a man to become a woman and vice versa. Cutting bits off or sewing them on isn’t going to do the job. Physiology and biology won’t be denied.
Real sexual amorphism does exist, but it affects such a small number of people that it shouldn’t merit public discussion, never mind legislation. The overwhelming majority of today’s transsexuals are disturbed individuals who should be either told to go home and forget that nonsense or, in extreme cases, offered psychiatric help.
Had he taken that line of defence, Dr Mackereth would still have been sacked. Like any other state behemoth, the NHS isn’t about intellectual rigour. It’s about bending people to state control.
But he could have taken it to court and taken his chances. His defence counsel could certainly have brought more tomes of scientific evidence into the courtroom than any other defence could ever boast.
Or perhaps he’d lose the case anyway. A tyrant can forgive any crime, except one against tyranny. And all modern states, regardless of what they call themselves, are tyrannical to an extent unthinkable at any time before Jesus Christ became a superstar.
That’s why Dr Mackereth should count himself lucky. He committed a crime against the modern despotic ethos, yet he’s still at large. Long live liberalism.
It is not that long ago that anyone who wished to become a sexual chimera would have had to go to a private hospital in a country that turned a blind eye to such things (Morocco for example). Now, a doctor who disapproved of chimerical surgery would have to seek work in a private hospital. Unfortunately, compatible private and charitable hospitals run by Catholics, Masons, Methodists and the like have all but disappeared in the UK. However, we can only hope that ‘for profit’ private hospitals are probably run by managers who prefer to run things efficiently rather than act as thought police and tosh-driven social engineers.
‘In this case, Dr Mackereth could merely have cited reams of medical research proving beyond any doubt whatsoever that it’s impossible for a man to become a woman and vice versa. Cutting bits off or sewing them on isn’t going to do the job. Physiology and biology won’t be denied.’
I think this statement goes to the heart of the matter, but don’t let reality get in the way of ‘progress’. Chopping off a man’s willy and creating a vagina by removing fatty tissue between his (whoops) legs and filling him with hormones makes he a she, doesn’t it? Ah, but did the prostate get removed? Actually, I have a very good friend who had all that done many years ago, at her (formerly his) expense. I regard my friend as a woman even if she technically is a male. Even she is appalled at the thought of this process being allowed without a doctor’s consent. it’s definitely not something to be entered into lightly for sure. What is even more worrying is that young children are being encouraged to ‘explore’ their gender identities. The world is going mad.
This article has finally convinced me, Christianity is true! Bloody well cheer up, Isaac!
That wasn’t my purpose here. It’s just that there’s a lot of science that supports the Christian view of the world and next to none that contradicts it.
Is the earth 4,600 years old?
Correct doesn’t mean literally correct, especially wherever periods of time are concerned. The earth isn’t 4,600 years old, and God probably didn’t create the world in six days. Yet scientific evidence does suggest that the world was created in one felt swoop, and its age is indeed counted from a certain set point. Not bad for a book written in the language of poetic imagery.
Excellent article, but please remember how Socrates was found guilty of ‘not believing in the gods of the state’ and therefore offered the hemlock. Perhaps Dr. Mackereth will be given the modern equivalent and have to handle a little novochek on his way home.
“A Muslim may refuse to shake hands with a female client (a case from my own experience) or insist that all pork products be removed from a school canteen. ”
Then not only refuse or demand. Their refusals and demands are CATERED TO!
Mr Boot you have misreported this case – the doctor refused to recognise that gender, not sex, was determined from birth.
Oh well, we’ll both burn in the fire of PC Inquisition. I, for refusing to use ‘gender’ in any other than the grammatical sense; you, for being ironical about it. Don’t you know that in such matters no irony is allowed?