Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S1 · Q24 Ethicist: In general it is wrong

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Ethicist: In general it is wrong to use medical treatments and procedures of an experimental nature without the patient’s consent, because the patient has a right to reject or accept a treatment on the basis of full information about all the available options.

Conclusion

Some limited nonconsensual medical research should be allowed.

Evidence

Even though in general it's wrong to not get consent first, if we don't occasionally bypass consent in medical emergencies, we won't be able to get knowledge of the best treatment for emergency conditions.

Evaluate / Goal

Since there's no other way to get this knowledge (the conditional "only if" prevents us from arguing in that style), we could only object to this author by saying,

The author is apparently assuming that this knowledge is valuable enough that it supersedes people's right to give consent to experimental treatments.

24.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the ethicist's argument?

  1. Doctors often do not know

    Too Strong: often

    Our author doesn't have to think that doctors are often confused about what would be best. If they're only occasionally confused, and they want to consider an experimental treatment, and they would need to occasionally bypass consent in order to figure out whether this experimental treatment is better, then our author can still make the same argument.

    2% picked this

  2. If patients knew that experimental

    Out of Scope Relationship

    The author is never discussing any causal connection between patients' awareness of an experimental treatment with the integrity of the research. She wasn't saying we should sometimes bypass consent because we need the patients to be knocked out, so that they're not aware of the experimental treatment. She was presumably saying, an unconscious or barely conscious person arrives in the emergency room, and we'd like to try an experimental treatment but it's impossible, in their state, to get their consent.

    6% picked this

  3. Nonconsensual medical research should be

    Too Strong: only if / highly likely

    The author hasn't committed to this stringent a standard. She does sound like she wants to be conservative about allowing nonconsensual research, but the might be willing to allow it in circumstances in which it's just likely (not highly likely) to yield results that would benefit the patient. Honestly, what she cares more about is that it would be highly likely to provide knowledge of the best treatment (which might actually come from us learning that "whoops, this experimental treatment is not the best. It did not benefit that patient.")

    7% picked this

  4. In cases where the best

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: ceases to have the right The author has definitely not committed to this harsh rule of thumb: any time we don't know the best treatment, the patient has no right to know the treatment plan and the alternatives. The author's conclusion only commits her to thinking, in at least some cases, we will supersede the patient's right to know the treatment plan and alternatives.

    4% picked this

  5. Correct

    The right of patients to

    Why this is right

    This just reflects the balancing of competing interests that the author is making. She is Weighing Tradeoffs: on the one hand, the patient has a right to consent; on the other hand, we need to try experimental treatments on unconscious emergency room patients w/o their consent. If she thinks that we should sometimes do the experimental treatments, then she must be assuming that sometimes the 2nd thing outweighs the 1st thing.

    Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    80% picked this

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