Philadelphia Medicine Fall/Winter 2019 - 17

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children safe from drug dealers who will want to supply the new
centralized market of users."

supervise intravenous drug use and provide syringes, disposable
cookers, matches, bottled water and tourniquets.

Farrell added "We all know the pain of addiction. Many of us
have family or friends in the throes of addiction. We are nothing but
compassionate about their experience and struggle. But a legalized
injection site is not the solution."

Clark said his work was driven by one of the Catholic Church's
fundamental beliefs - that all human life is sacred. "We took a lot of
pushback on (the safe injection sites). 'Why are you, a Catholic ethicist,
promoting giving clean needles to heroin addicts?' But what we're
trying to do is based on the sanctity of life. Unless you're ready for
rehab, you're not going to be successful. We're trying to keep people
alive until they're ready to go into rehab. That's our ultimate goal.

The issue has brought mixed reactions from people who counsel
those with drug addictions. Dr. Jeffrey Berger, a local addiction
medicine specialist, wrote that safe injection sites are "interventions
of despair from a culture of abandonment.
"When you allow them (people with drug addictions) to live
in that fantasy world with no consequence, you can never break
through so that they can be healed."
Peter Clark, SJ, disagrees. He is a Catholic priest and director of
Saint Joseph's University's Institute of Clinical Bioethics. He helps
doctors around the world wrestle with difficult ethical dilemmas
and has given weekly ethical teaching rounds to four local hospitals.
He told Saint Joseph's University Magazine that safe injection sites
can do some good.
In a study he led with a team of doctors and students, published
in The Internet Journal of Public Health late last year, the professor
and his team supported the creation of safe injection sites that would
be staffed by health care professionals. Those professionals would

"I learned a long time ago that many people think ethics can be
black and white. I think it's gray in most places."
Clark said he's not an advocate of illegal drug use. "But I am an
advocate of treating people with dignity and respect, and I think
we have to do that where they're at."
Goldfein knows that people in the Kensington area are both
angry and concerned about drug use on their streets, and afraid that
things will only get worse with a safe injection site. "We hear what
you're concerned about. We want to address it.
"So, if you're concerned public consumption, we'll bring it inside.
If you're concerned about overdosing in front of your kids, we'll
bring that inside. If you're concerned about drug litter, we'll bring
that inside. We want to have a safe neighborhood for everyone." *

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Fall/Winter 2019 : Philadelphia Medicine 17

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Philadelphia Medicine Fall/Winter 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Philadelphia Medicine Fall/Winter 2019