0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 19/12/2020 03:05:42I agree that most of us don't want to be sacrificed.And there we have the essence of morality: it's the majority answer to the test questions. A person who answers "yes" to both questions is regarded as (1) deviant and (2) immoral.
I agree that most of us don't want to be sacrificed.
I've never met a soldier who wants to be sacrificed, or who particularly relishes the prospect of killing others. Nor a miner who wants to contract lung disease or make more dust than necessary. But everyone (except some Republicans) balances risk against reward.
If your pseudonym hints at your age, you probably saw "Alice's Restaurant", in which Arlo Guthrie is called up for duty in Vietnam and is turned down as mentally unfit because he says he really, really wants to kill people, but would like a choice of sides. Only politicians think like that, and get away with it.
Dealing with unconscious patients is easy. You ask yourself the standard two questions, because in the absence of any other information that is the best estimate you have of an average person's wishes and values. Above all, save life if you can, because that gives the patient more options than death.
No patch. If I was injured and unconscious I'd most likely be grateful to anyone who saved my life, so test 1 is satisfied, and I'd certainly do whatever I could to save the life of my nearest and dearest. Test 2 satisfied.On recovering, I might well decide I'd rather be dead, but it's better to have the option and make one's own decision. That's where the law fails on both moral counts, by denying suicide to those who can't do it unaided.
The really crazy problem is where soldiers have been court-martialled for "finishing off" a seriously wounded enemy.
In the absence of any other evidence, your best bet is to assume that your unconscious patient would want the same as you. The law will not allow you to kill him, so that option is not a moral choice, though oddly it is a requirement if the patient is any other species, conscious or not, and in your professional opinion would be "better off dead."
This is military logic: If an enemy soldier is standing up, you get a medal for shooting him. But if the enemy soldier has already fallen down onto the ground, you get court-martialled for shooting him.
We can add to the scenario to tip the balance to the other direction. The doctor has experienced many similar cases previously. He saved all of previous patients, which then complaint that they would face terrible life they don't want to live. They prefer to die peacefully before regaining consciousness. Most of them get depressed and committed suicide.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 25/12/2020 21:54:16We can add to the scenario to tip the balance to the other direction. The doctor has experienced many similar cases previously. He saved all of previous patients, which then complaint that they would face terrible life they don't want to live. They prefer to die peacefully before regaining consciousness. Most of them get depressed and committed suicide.Suicide has no moral repercussions. If you don't like flying, don't become a pilot. If you don't like saving lives, the medical profession is not for you. But having chosen your profession and faced with a planeload of passengers or an unconscious patient, nobody will blame you for doing your job. The law (at least in the UK) does conflict with morality when a patient has asked to die, and I'm fairly certain that a degree of professional discretion is deployed from time to time. After all, Hippocrates goes on to say ".....nor strive officiously to prolong life" which is morally way ahead of anything a politician would dare to put his unworthy name to.So here's the moral way to put things right. Propose a decent, watertight and explicit decriminalisation of assisting suicide. List all those who vote against it in Parliament, and keep them alive no matter what pain and indiginity they may suffer.Back to the plot. Would you like it if I guessed on your behalf that you'd like to die? I think not. Would you be happy if I decided (without asking you) not to treat your nearest and dearest after an accident from which they could survive? I think not. So the tests are valid and in the case of the unconscious patient, the moral decision is to treat up to the Hippocratic limit.Being left with no arms would indeed be a nasty surprise but https://www.grapplearts.com/jessica-cox-pilot some people start off that way and have a good life and https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0046035/bio having no legs doesn't stop one becoming a war hero. Death, on the other hand, is a bit final.