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Biomedical subjects

D T Ridley

Publications and source records attributed to D T Ridley.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Informed consent, informed refusal, informed choice--what is it that makes a patient's medical treatment decisions informed?

Informed consent is the fundamental ethical and legal doctrine that protects the patient's rights of personal autonomy and bodily self-determination. An adjunct to the doctrine of informed consent advanced by some is the notion of informed refusal. According to advocates of this concept, incoherent, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated patients cannot make informed treatment choices because such patients cannot receive a full and current explanation of their health problems and treatment options. This, in turn, raises serious questions about what it is that makes a patient's treatment decisions--whether consents or refusals--informed. Is current, detailed information about the patient's medical condition and treatment options an ethical and legal prerequisite? Can non-medical values and concerns of the patient ever suffice to make the patient's treatment choices informed? How does the concept of informed refusal affect the use of health-care advance directives? This paper will address these important questions.

Christianity↗
PubMed1999

Jehovah's Witnesses' refusal of blood: obedience to scripture and religious conscience.

Jehovah's Witnesses are students of the Bible. They refuse transfusions out of obedience to the scriptural directive to abstain and keep from blood. Dr Muramoto disagrees with the Witnesses' religious beliefs in this regard. Despite this basic disagreement over the meaning of Biblical texts, Muramoto flouts the religious basis for the Witnesses' position. His proposed policy change about accepting transfusions in private not only conflicts with the Witnesses' fundamental beliefs but it promotes hypocrisy. In addition, Muramoto's arguments about pressure to conform and coerced disclosure of private information misrepresent the beliefs and practices of Jehovah's Witnesses and ignore the element of individual conscience. In short, Muramoto resorts to distortion and uncorroborated assertions in his effort to portray a matter of religious faith as a matter of medical ethical debate.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1998

Honoring Jehovah's Witnesses' advance directives in emergencies: a response to Drs. Migden and Braen.

Jehovah's Witnesses refuse blood transfusions out of obedience to the Bible's command to all Christians to abstain from blood. The Witnesses take this scriptural injunction seriously and, of their own initiative, execute advance medical directive cards to communicate their refusal to medical personnel in the event of their incapacity. In portraying the Witnesses' refusal of blood as the uninformed result of their subjugation by the Watchtower Society, Migden and Braen distort the facts about Jehovah's Witnesses, the basis for their refusal of blood, and their use of the blood refusal card. Further, not only does Migden and Braen's analysis subordinate patient values to professional preference in all cases, but the heightened scrutiny protocol they propose is useless because it cannot possibly be implemented in the hypothetical they posit. Finally, their legal analysis is not well founded and practitioners who choose to follow it will do so at their peril.

Advance Directives↗