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 polic

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.