5 ms·

and that's why the West is decaying. Who cares about your morals when there's an epidemic ?

• simongray 7y ago
  > and that's why the West is decaying. Who cares about your morals when there's an epidemic ? This kind of bait is not needed on Hacker News. Keep that on reddit or facebook or whatever.
  • spats1990 7y ago
    In fairness, the GP is bait too. It's just more thoughtful bait with paragraph breaks. It's basically elegant finger wagging. Decay of the west bit aside, the parent has a point. Do you freak patients out by getting them to sign things when they are already in quarantine and fearing for their lives? Or do you prioritise research and response? related: "Conducting Research in Disease Outbreaks" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669128/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669128/
    • DanBC 7y ago
      But even that document talks about the need to get consent from patients if you're going to use them in medical research.
• culturestate 7y ago
  > Who cares about your morals when there's an epidemic ? I actually find this to be an interesting ethical dilemma. On one hand, I would probably agree that this specific situation demands a degree of urgency and action such that the rights of an individual should be subjugated, to some extent, to the needs of society as a whole. On the other hand, if we do accept that there are scenarios where this is a necessary trade-off, who gets to decide which outbreaks qualify? Could someone just invent one to circumvent medical ethics requirements whenever they prove inconvenient? I guess it's not entirely dissimilar to arguments over limits on freedom of expression in cases where a person's speech can be deemed to cause harm to others (e.g. the canonical yelling fire in a crowded theatre). Where and how do you draw the line?