I was reading in the Daily Mail this morning that a young woman died as a result of refusing blood transfusions post birth due to her Jehovah's Witness beliefs.
Initially i was thinking what I would have done if i'd been the attending doctor.
If the woman had been conscious, i'd have probably tried to get a court order to get her declared clinically insane (or trying to commit suicide). Once she'd lapsed into unconsciousness, i would have tried to arrest the family for acting against their charge's interests.
However now i'm wondering how i'd feel, if someone tried give me a procedure i didn't ethically agree with, even if it was to my own benefit. Blood transfusions are a very moral consequence free treatment, since the person who gives the blood is not harmed, and it has huge benefits, wearas organ transplants can have serious or even fatal consequences for the donors.
I suppose the closest example for me would be a treatment developed by either higher primate or human experimentation. I believe we have no place experimenting on higher primates (or possibly lower primates) for our own selfish benefit. That said its a bit of an ethical dilemma for me whether use of such knowledge garnered from such in-human activities is justifiable.
I think i would probably claim a form of moral superiority, because my example is actually a relevant ethical question, while the Jehovah's Witness's prohibition is based on a questionable interpretation of the bible that was written thousands of years before the possibility of blood transfusions existed.
It is an act of extreme selfishness to ask doctors to stand by and do nothing while someone is dying. For the time of medicine, doctors have wrestled with "Do Not Resuscitate", and most have found this to be fair, because there are certain situations where more medical intervention is just prolonged suffering. However this was not like this, it was a young woman dying because a procedure could save her life was refused on very questionable grounds. It is barbaric to force medical staff to do nothing because of a belief, if you don't want medical help, then stay away from a hospital, because doctor's have to go through too much to have to put up with people committing senseless suicide in front of them.
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