this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
94 points (100.0% liked)
Science
13032 readers
2 users here now
Studies, research findings, and interesting tidbits from the ever-expanding scientific world.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Can someone explain what ethical considerations are to be made here, except not to exclude proven treatments?
Ethically speaking, we should not be experimenting on humans, even with their explicit consent. It's not allowed by any credible review board (such as the IRB) and in many countries you can be held legally liable for doing experiments on humans.
With that being said, there have been exceptions to this, in that in some countries we allow unproven treatments to be given to terminal patients (patients who are going to die from a condition). We also generally don't have repercussions for folks who experiment on themselves because they are perhaps the only people capable of truly weighing the pros and cons, of not being mislead by figures of authority (although I do think there is merit of discussing this with regards to being influenced by peers), and they are the only ones for which consent cannot be misconstrued.
Unless you cause harm to others (like accidentally starting the next pandemic), how could you ever punish someone for treating themselves? 🤣
We don't, as far as I know, make cutting your own arm off illegal and I fail to see how this is different.
PS: I'm not arguing against you, just noodling philosophically.
Cutting off your arm isn't necessarily illegal (didn't look into that specifically, and it may well be), but from my quick googling is, legally required to be reported by most if not all medical professionals. That report will almost certainly fall well within the rules of what will put you into a 72 hour involuntarily psychiatric hold.
So... Cutting your own arm off, regardless of legality, is likely to lead 72 or more hours of imprisonment.
I don't know where exactly the line between cutting your own arm off for fun vs. to study it vs. self treating with homemade cancer drugs falls on the danger to self and others scale. My line would likely be a lot closer to 'do what you want to do' than most judges, but I do think cutting off your arm for most any reason is a reasonable bar for some outside inquiry, from a mental health standpoint.
Just noodling here as well.