Home > Hobbies > Poetry > Archive > Clough

* Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Clough’s version of the 6th Commandment is often quoted (out of context!) in medical ethics debates, as if it were a serious claim that it is not right to struggle to keep terminally ill people alive, especially if they are suffering. Such a use of Clough’s 6th Commandment is repugnant, since the poet’s whole point (in that Commandment) is to satirize the hypocrisy, materialism, the selective ethics and self-interest common to mankind in general, and to the medical profession in particular, when it does not afford due respect to the sanctity of human life. [This certainly proves recognizing satire requires intelligence, but engaging in medical ethics debates does not. -jkh-]

Home > Hobbies > Poetry > Archive > Clough