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by dsr_ 3053 days ago
It's necessary to establish a policy before you can enforce it.

You can't argue about exceptions if you don't fundamentally support the legitimacy of the policy, either.

"First, do no harm" is a policy statement. Once you accept it, you can make arguments about tradeoffs (pain management, amputation, chemotherapy, abortion), but without having a policy statement, there's no argument being made, just a free-for-all mess.

1 comments

> without having a policy statement, there's no argument being made, just a free-for-all mess.

Given that medical treatments are the second or third leading cause of death in the U.S., how much good is the policy statement really doing?