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An Appeal To (Your) Common Sense and Values
Values and principles taken for granted in society have been reflected in the core teachings of Reiki for decades. It is not enough that a focus is on the experience. Systemic teachings have provided us with the path of responsibility. Sadly, over time there has been an erosion of values and liberties that we all take for granted. Dressed in the sweet tasting ‘it is in the persons higher interest – they do not need to consciously know’, this article will show how our most basic values and fundamental rights are being deliberately ignored by a portion of the Reiki community.
In general, at all levels of society there are checks and balances whenever an individual (or the state) interferes with any single or group of people. This is commonly termed ‘Law & Legislation’. Law is built upon ‘Justice’. Justice includes concepts of moral rightness and fairness. A sub-division of Justice is ‘Social Justice’, covering equality.
The ‘rights’ which individuals in ‘free’ society enjoy are usually taken for granted. Opinions of our rights come in many forms, two are worth noting:
In 1634, Maryland was the first colony (in the now United States of America) where ‘Freedom of Religion’ was adopted. The Maryland Toleration Act came into effect in 1649:
"No person or persons...shall from henceforth be any waies troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof."
This was supported by the ‘Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom’ written by Thomas Jefferson in 1779:
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
Entering into any act of Reiki without the express consent of the individual in question fails to take into account the religious/spiritual beliefs of said individual. Some religions feel so strongly about their beliefs that they will risk death to uphold them. Jehovah’s Witnesses and blood transfusions an obvious example. Should the world ignore the legally held rights of a Jehovah’s Witness to refuse a life saving blood transfusion? Would you ignore their rights? Could you ignore their rights, based on what you felt was best? Perhaps you are one of the ‘chosen’ who is able to, without a doubt (and without interference from your own beliefs?) communicate effectively with an individual’s so-called ‘higher self. Are you a reliable witness to the truth when you are ‘communicating?’
What about the billions of individuals who may not want any Reiki actions conjured upon them? Do they deserve the same level of rights and respect as Jehovah’s Witnesses? That no matter how much it may be in their best interest, the individual’s right to practice their religion and belief is paramount.
Perhaps you do not use Reiki on people with religion. Communicating with the ‘higher self’ of Atheists. Do you know which people are atheists and which are not? By definition, Reiki without permission means that the practitioner has not begun one of the most important aspects of Reiki treatments, particularly professional Reiki treatments, i.e. there has been no case history compiled.
Ethics
The ‘Ministry of Ethics’ is an internet web resource intended to be an information point, maintained by a small group of doctors and medical students. It lets individuals understand in plain language the complexities surrounding medical consent;
http://ministryofethics.co.uk/?p=6
MAIN PRINCIPLES OF CONSENT
(Except under special circumstances, for example for serious mental illness under the Mental Health Act 1987/2007 or certain communicable diseases under the Public Health [Control of Diseases] Act 1984).
Obtaining informed consent is a legal and ethical necessity before treating a patient. It derives from the principle of autonomy; one of the 4 pillars of medical ethics: (Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-maleficence and Equality - as described by Beauchamp and Childress). Touching/treating someone without permission could be considered assault or battery under criminal law and civil law, even if the person was helped by your actions.
For consent to be valid it must be informed consent. For this to be the case it must be:
- Given voluntarily (with no coercion or deceit)
Given by an individual who has capacity
Given by an individual who has been fully informed about the issue.
Consent can be written, verbal or non-verbal/implied. A written consent form is not the actual consent itself, but evidence that consent has been given (most forms include sections to record the important aspects of the procedure the patient has been informed of). Implied consent is an action such as offering your arm for blood samples. It can be unreliable as a patient may argue that their actions were misunderstood and they did not actually wish to consent.
Refusal to consent
Refusal to consent requires a much higher level of capacity. However if the medical professional believes that the person has capacity then the reasons for refusal can be rational, irrational or even non-existent, then the wishes of the patient should be respected.
There are very few exceptions to the right of refusal:
Pregnancy: In Re S (1992) the courts ruled to have Caesarean section (a lifesaving procedure for the foetus) despite refusal from the woman on religious grounds. However in 1998 the judge in the case of St George's Healthcare NHS Trust vs S ruled that pregnant women retain the right to refuse treatment even if it is intended to benefit the unborn child.
Minors: See below and child health section
Undue influence: If a healthcare professional believes that the patient has been unduly influenced by a relative to refuse a life-saving treatment, then the doctor should ask for guidance from the courts
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine
As a matter of both ethics and the law, adult patients – who have no cognitive impairments – should be centrally involved as decision-makers during their medical care. In ethics, the well-established principle of “respect for persons” that supports this perspective (Because no one is usually better suited than adults themselves to appreciate what a diagnosis and treatment means for their lives, patients should ordinarily be respected as “experts” about the medical treatment that is desirable to them. Respecting patients as the central decision-maker also protects against paternalism, the view that health care practitioners should make decisions they believe to be in patients’ best interests.
In most respects, the law converges with ethics in making it inadvisable for physicians to impose tests and treatments on patients without their knowledge or consent. In the United States, the law will treat medical treatment imposed without consent as a tort (a wrongful action). In response to a charge of unwanted treatment, Justice Benjamin Cardozo offered a classic legal opinion in the 1914 case Schloendorff v. Society of N.Y. Hospital: “every human being of adult years has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient's consent commits an assault for which he is liable in damages.” Subsequent cases have underscored this right to accept or refuse treatment and underlined rights to self-determination and the right to be left alone – even if choices seem poorly made to others.
Informed consent is therefore both a theory and a practice of patient involvement in health care. Its theory rests on well-established ethical and legal views in the United States. In practice, informed consent means providing information that enables someone to make a meaningful decision about the desirability of a medical test or treatment, as measured in terms of its risks and benefits.
What must be disclosed
….. At the very least, good informed consent procedures identify the following information for patients:
a. the rationale for a proposed test or the nature and significance of a particular diagnosis; the degree of certainty in testing and diagnoses may be relevant too
b. a proposed therapy recommendation
c. alternative therapy recommendations
d. risks and benefits associated with various therapy options
e. identification of persons who will carry out therapies
Exceptions to Informed Consent
Both ethics and the law presume that adults are competent to make medical decisions unless there are reasons to the contrary…..
Therapeutic Privilege
Some physicians withhold information about diagnoses and treatments from patients if they believe that disclosure would be harmful in an important way. Some commentators defend the use of “therapeutic privilege.” They say that withholding certain information is important to the health or well being of the patient. For example, in the past many physicians held the view that they should withhold diagnoses of cancer to avoid sinking patients into despair.
The idea of therapeutic privilege is rooted in notions of medical paternalism and is a matter of considerable ethical debate. When contested as a matter of law, some courts have accepted this notion in very limited circumstances, though no court has recognized it as a routine or blanket privilege.
Ethical Values
The terms ethics and morality refer to the domain of knowledge that is concerned with describing and analyzing the basic principles, values, and virtues of human life. This domain of knowledge has at least two components. It may concern itself with descriptive efforts to identify the actual behavior of people, or it can concern itself with normative efforts to identify the standards that ought to guide human behavior. There is ordinarily no distinction to be drawn between the terms ethics and morality.
A key component of ethical analysis is that it draws on no specific religious beliefs. That is, ethical analysis tries to bracket conclusions that depend upon religious assumptions and views. Religious belief does in fact guide a great deal of human behavior, and it does offer standards of ideal human values, virtues, and behavior. Ethical analysis, however, self-consciously tries to set these views aside in order to make findings that all people would recognize as true and binding, regardless of their specific religious views.
An ethical analysis involves the use of a common vocabulary and concepts in order to come to an agreement about the nature and significance of a particular set of choices.
Key Components of Ethical Analysis in Medicine
While each school of ethical analysis has its own methods of analysis, there are three key issues that must be included in any analysis bearing on medicine: autonomy, beneficence, and social justice. These concepts are key, but they do not exhaust the ways in which an issue may be analyzed regarding its morality. The application of these concepts does not dictate that people using them will always arrive at the same conclusions. They do, however, structure the way in which a case or issue is approached. Each illuminates, that is, issues essential for consideration and offers a way in which to construct justifications having moral force.
Autonomy
The term autonomy refers to the capacity of persons to choose . philosophically, this capacity is rooted in the belief that persons are not merely biological robots but have the power to make cognitively informed choices. Ethics therefore asserts a standard of respect for this capacity and concludes that persons may not be used as if they did not have this capacity. This capacity is understood as the basis for a human dignity, and respect is due that dignity. People should be convinced to act by moral justifications, not forced to act as if they were simply pieces of furniture to be moved around.
In medicine, an ethical analysis will therefore ask whether a particular treatment respects people in their capacities to choose. Historically, there are a number of instances in which biomedicine has erred badly in failing to respect the choice of human beings. Two examples that are worth mentioning are the Tuskegee syphilis studies (in which African-American men were followed in their progression with syphilis without ever being advised that treatment was available) and the U.S. human radiation experiments (in which men and women were subjected to radiation treatment, again without their knowledge and consent).
As it is the goal of medicine to protect human health in order to preserve the greatest range of somatic and psychic choice, it is also the goal of ethics to preserve the greatest range of moral choice. Toward this end, biomedical practices should ordinarily engage patients only with their informed consent. In this sense, contemporary medical ethics resist the temptations toward paternalism, namely the judgment that physicians are better situated to make judgments about their patients' treatment because they have superior knowledge. In effect, respect for human autonomy suggests that it is better that people make their own choices, even if they make mistakes, because it is this policy that most respects people in their autonomy.
Practically speaking, in an ethical analysis consideration must be made of whether or not a particular treatment or policy respects patient autonomy. To be sure, physician autonomy can also enter into the analysis, but all ethical analysis in medicine must concern itself with patient autonomy in order to be complete and convincing.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/ethics/eth_analysis.htm
http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/ethics/ic.htm
Our Reiki colleagues conjure Reiki acts with the belief it will heal an unsuspecting individual. In order to enable themselves to feel better the Reiki practitioner committing this act will have the belief that they can consult with an individual’s so-called ‘higher self’. Even if this was possible it still remains as a serious breach of an individual’s rights.
There are quite clear guidelines within the medical community. Guidelines, compiled by many learned scholars. Not only are these medical guidelines, like all things in society they transcend. Areas such as philosophy, morality and justice are also breached by such actions. The subject of Autonomy, perfectly outlined above by the Chicago College of Medicine gives readers a brief outline.
Human Rights
Subjecting unsuspecting individuals to Reiki practice may be in breach of parts of the Human Rights Act. That is, if they ever found out what you had been doing;
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 18 protects the individual from interference in their right to practice religion. It has been the decree of many religions that Reiki is not to be permitted to members. Ignoring this wish and providing a hidden Reiki service may be breaching a person’s human rights
Article 19 provides the protection for individuals to have the right to have their own opinion without interference. This is not a so-called ‘higher self’ opinion. It is the right to have their everyday conscious beliefs. Without outside interference.
Conclusion
To continue to ignore founding principles of freedom, human rights, medical ethics and opinion from experts in these fields not only damages the image of Reiki with the rest of the world, it may leave you open to some form of reprimand or prosecution.
Individuals in society acting with their own beliefs and self-interest at heart, is a disease that is poisoning the human spirit. Countries decimate other countries using the most obvious of lies, for the most heinous of reasons. ‘Champions of rights’ are taking away your rights. It seems a great many practitioners of Reiki no longer care about your individual rights. What a Muslim, Christian, Jew or Hindu may think is irrelevant to the Reiki practitioner focused solely on their beliefs. Acting solely on their ego.
Your personal freedom only has merit provided it does not adversely affect other people’s personal freedom. Is the Reiki world to continue to ignore the rights that people have fought, died for, and are willing to die for still? Are you willing to continue to help foster a world where the individual knows better than everyone else? Great nations are built upon the concept of not allowing that.
Are we going to ignore the protections that human rights, law and medical ethics provides the citizens of this planet? Do you know what individuals need better than nation builders, judges, lawyers, courts, doctors and universities? Based on your own personal beliefs? There is a word to describe actions such as that. Selfishness, irrespective of how it is ‘dressed’ is a silent virus in humanity. Spreading and permeating us all, no-one is completely immune from its effects.
We need to do the right thing. Take the moral path. Living Reiki is a meeting and merging of true humanity. An experience that societies values and protections compliment. Let the world see how virtuous and in harmony with humanity and society Reiki practitioners are.
Wayne Harrison
June 14th 2013
Wayne Harrison is a student of Sociology and Justice, completing studies with the Open University and Harvard. Currently studying under the guidance of Harvard, he has enrolled in courses with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wellesley College under the subjects of Philosophy and Sociology, with further Harvard studies in Neuroscience to be undertaken. Wayne has been a Reiki master for many years, and owns one of the world's most popular Reiki forums.
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