[ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sun Dec 7 11:47:58 UTC 2014


On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 12:59 AM, spike wrote:
<snip>
> To complicate matters a bit, I bounced this question off of one of my doctor
> friends.  He advised me to stop forthwith.  He didn't explain himself very
> well, just said there was just too many unknowns here to proceed, so, stop.
>
> Now I don't know what I am going to do.  But I might discuss the matter with
> the candidate's son, the one who has been a friend since college days, have
> him discuss the matter with my friends in the medical biz.
>

Re the ethics discussion, this particular case concerns medical
ethics, which is a particular sub-set of the ethics field.  And
sometimes there is no good, 100% correct solution to a medical
problem.

Probably what worries your doctor friend is his fundamental belief
"primum non nocere". First, do no harm. Then secondly, that if he does
do harm he will get the ass sued off him in court and have his license
to practice medicine revoked.

The intention of this principle is to stop enthusiastic doctors using
treatments without first testing them  thoroughly. "The treatment was
a success, but the patient died."

On the other hand, most medical treatments have some harmful
side-effects, but knowing what they are, the doctor can decide that,
on balance, the treatment does more good than harm. When faced with
terminal conditions, sometimes extreme, dangerous treatments can be
justified when the patient is going to die anyway. But there must be
some basis to expect the extreme treatment to help. Using terminal
patients as guinea pigs for untested treatments is forbidden and could
lead to serious trouble with the law.

In your case, you can give your data to the relatives, and that will
move the responsibility away from your shoulders. But I doubt if any
medical professional will risk his career by using an untested
treatment.


BillK



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