Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by throwthere 1209 days ago
Highlights an edge case of informed consent (medical consent).

Basically, it's impossible to "internally give" consent when done under any sort of threat.

In other words, she may "express" consent, but not "internally give consent."

What does that mean? Probably, she'll get strongly supervised treatment and nothing untoward happens. But then what happens if she suffers a serious side effect of the treatment?

3 comments

The government used to do everything it could to make executioners anonymous, so that friends/family of the aggrieved had no clear target for vengeance (whether civil or extrajudicial); and so society at large couldn’t recognize the executioner as “dishonourable” for being willing to perform such an act.

This edge-case could be pretty easily worked around by providing the same level of anonymity to doctors involved in state-ordered medical treatment. Can’t sue without a defendant!

I think you are misinterpreting the parent comment. The issue is not legal protection for doctors that administer state mandated treatments. She had the option in this case to self-isolate.

The issue is ethical, is it possible for a patient to give consent if it's given under threat (of incarceration or otherwise). I think medical consent as a concept has been weakened in the west this past decade, the first obvious example is Covid with people having to get vaccinated to have access to certain services and to keep their employment in some cases, the second example that struck me at the time are opt-out systems for organ donations.

No consent is needed if a noncompliant patient poses great harm to others.

The least harm to all is to force their treatment without their informed consent.

It's either that or keep paying for their total isolation until they die. Not treating a treatable fatal illness would be malpractice. If they wanted to kill themselves by some other means later, then that's a mental healthcare matter later.

Your response does nothing to address what I just said.
Hypothetical scenario: A man says to me, "take this free millions dollars or I'll shoot you."

In this case I'm 100% okay taking the money either way. The threat is immaterial to my internal consent.

To clarify... nope. In your instance the man gets your expression of consent, but very much does not have your internal consent.

I edited my post to clarify a bit more that informed consent is a specific term in medical ethics, and probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Thanks!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430827/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent

There's nothing edge about infectious idiots posing a danger to public health.

Compulsory quarantine and isolation is allowed by federal law.

https://www.hhs.gov/answers/public-health-and-safety/what-di...