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Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

irishtimes.com

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Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#301

Post by Klinky »

jostmey wrote: post #8
phnofive wrote: post #2

Discussed here fifteen days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882912 Not a huge update but an interesting discussion of FDA approval; can the FDA actually stop or sanction experimental procedures like this?

Yes, the FDA will insert itself to regulate medicine wherever it can. For example, the FDA has been pushing to regulate diagnostic tests as medical devices. It’s funny how Americans surrender medical autonomy to the government but draw a strict line in the sand in other issues

It's funny how susceptible Americans are to medical misinformation. The FDA is a necessity.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#302

Post by BjoernKW »

mlyle wrote: post #229
jlawson wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not, that's not how it works. You won't be denied tramua treatment for a gunshot because your doc told you to stop playing with guns. You won't be refused heart medicine because you didn't stop eating bacon when your doctor told you to 5 years earlier. You won't be denied ER treatment because you were drunk when you crashed your car. There is no rule where we have to treat all patients equally (including m…

I think if we really ran out of health care capacity, it might make sense to prioritize people who took preventative measures over those who didn't. Especially with COVID: if you're at the point of triage and rationing resources, you need to consider likely outcomes, and people with the vaccine presenting at hospital are more likely to survive than those presenting without. It seems like we're not going to bump into…

> people with the vaccine presenting at hospital are more likely to survive than those presenting without

In my opinion, that logic is flawed.

The currently available COVID-19 vaccines vastly reduce the likelihood of developing severe symptoms from a SARS‑CoV‑2 infection. They also somewhat reduce the risk of getting infected in the first place.

So, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 makes you far less likely to need to be hospitalized, should you contract the virus, which apart from of course being beneficial to yourself also helps with keeping the healthcare system from being overwhelmed.

However, if you've already been hospitalized, it is because you've developed severe symptoms, which in turn means that, in that situation, for you, the vaccine has failed.

At that point, all other factors being equal, your likely outcome is no different from that of a person who hasn't been vaccinated. Therefore, using vaccination as a criterion for triage (which - like you said - is all about rationing resources, not passing judgement) doesn't make sense.

Now, it could very well be possible that being vaccinated improves your outcome even once you've already developed symptoms sufficiently severe to require hospitalization. However, I'm not sure there's conclusive evidence suggesting that is indeed the case.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#303

Post by onion2k »

jlawson wrote: post #225
onion2k wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's different because there's no moral judgement in that position. If you refuse treatment for a condition, even a preventative one, then there's no moral imperative to offer a different treatment later. Doctors did their best to save you, but you didn't do your part. That's on you.

Absolutely not, that's not how it works. You won't be denied tramua treatment for a gunshot because your doc told you to stop playing with guns. You won't be refused heart medicine because you didn't stop eating bacon when your doctor told you to 5 years earlier. You won't be denied ER treatment because you were drunk when you crashed your car. There is no rule where we have to treat all patients equally (including m…

You won't be refused heart medicine because you didn't stop eating bacon when your doctor told you to 5 years earlier.

Yes, you would. Doctors refuse to give people treatment until they've lowered their weight, reduce their cholesterol, given up smoking or drinking, or increased their level of exercise all the time.

There is no point giving someone life-saving medical treatment if it isn't going to work because of some other factor. That's a waste of time and money. In every case the patient has to show that they're willing to do their part. Medicine is not just popping a few pills or turning up for surgery. There's effort required in order to get better.

In the case of Covid, having the vaccine is part of that effort. Someone who hasn't tried to improve their long-term health by, for example, giving up smoking, and someone who hasn't tried to improve their long-term health by having the Covid vaccine are basically the same - they're both putting their health at risk unnecessarily. Doctors should consider that when they're prioritizing treatment.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#304

Post by achow »

Razengan wrote: post #269
achow wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not same. The non vaccinated are actively choosing to be a danger to people around them. It is like actively carrying concealed unlicensed gun which can silently and anynomously fire at people.

> This is not same. > The non vaccinated are actively choosing to be a danger to people around them. > It is like actively carrying concealed unlicensed gun which can silently and anynomously fire at people. What about giving a life extension to someone who stabs other people? The recipient of the heart transplant, David Bennett, actively chose to be a danger to people around him.

Yes. Why not stick to that topic. Why to conflate by bringing in vaccine one?

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#306

Post by onion2k »

mlyle wrote: post #229
jlawson wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not, that's not how it works. You won't be denied tramua treatment for a gunshot because your doc told you to stop playing with guns. You won't be refused heart medicine because you didn't stop eating bacon when your doctor told you to 5 years earlier. You won't be denied ER treatment because you were drunk when you crashed your car. There is no rule where we have to treat all patients equally (including m…

I think if we really ran out of health care capacity, it might make sense to prioritize people who took preventative measures over those who didn't. Especially with COVID: if you're at the point of triage and rationing resources, you need to consider likely outcomes, and people with the vaccine presenting at hospital are more likely to survive than those presenting without. It seems like we're not going to bump into…

It seems like we're not going to bump into those limits, though, so it's moot.

Only because people who got the vaccine are significantly less likely to require hospitalization though. At the start of the pandemic there was a very real possibility that we'd actually run out of ICU beds and ventilators. Much of the 'flatten the curve' effort was to protect healthcare services.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#307

Post by burrows »

skissane wrote: post #293
burrows wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you haven't explained how this (obviously true) statement is relevant to the original discussion, about the morality of providing life-saving medical treatment to perpetrators of serious crimes. My original point was in response to the claim that “the key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is sick, regardless of who they are”. I took this to be an ought and wanted to point out that its truth isn’t est…

That textbook definition of “valid” only applies to purely deductive arguments. Outside of mathematics, most arguments humans make have a significant non-deductive component (inductive and/or abductive). So, unless we assume that moral reasoning is closer to mathematical reasoning than to the kinds of reasoning we normally use in the sciences and humanities-a very dubious assumption-the formal concept of “validity” y…

> That textbook definition of “valid” only applies to purely deductive arguments. Outside of mathematics, most arguments humans make have a significant non-deductive component (inductive and/or abductive). So, unless we assume that moral reasoning is closer to mathematical reasoning than to the kinds of reasoning we normally use in the sciences and humanities-a very dubious assumption-the formal concept of “validity” you are invoking has rather limited relevance to morality.

I don’t have any sense for the various properties of inductive arguments. So to the extent that moral arguments are inductive, I have nothing to say. Thanks for pointing out that I’m assuming moral arguments must be deductive. Any recommendations for an introductory text on inductive arguments?

> That’s why I read your statement as intending “valid” informally rather than formally, since in its informal sense the term is not restricted to purely deductive arguments; and informally it is very much a normative concept (formally, I think it has multiple formal senses, some of which contain more normativity than others)

Understood.

> I think your overall point is, you are expressing scepticism about claims to know the truth of some particular moral proposition, grounded in a more general scepticism of the possibility of any moral knowledge at all.

Yes, that is my point.

> I think that kind of general moral scepticism is (usually) a form of normative scepticism. The big problem I see with normative scepticism, is that attempts to argue for it logically and rationally turn out to be self-refuting, because logic and rationality are themselves normative concepts.

This is the first time that I’ve heard of normative epistemology, which I gather is what you are talking about. One thing I will say though, thinking about this seems smoother than thinking about normative morality because (I think) I don’t have as many childhood memories of people telling me what I ought to think compared to those of people telling me what I ought to do.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#308

Post by pjc50 »

jostmey wrote: post #8
phnofive wrote: post #2

Discussed here fifteen days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882912 Not a huge update but an interesting discussion of FDA approval; can the FDA actually stop or sanction experimental procedures like this?

Yes, the FDA will insert itself to regulate medicine wherever it can. For example, the FDA has been pushing to regulate diagnostic tests as medical devices. It’s funny how Americans surrender medical autonomy to the government but draw a strict line in the sand in other issues

> regulate diagnostic tests

If only there hadn't been a major high profile collapse of a fraudulent diagnostic test company recently.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#309

Post by burglekutt »

radu_floricica wrote: post #254

I've said this before here and got downvoted for it, but bioethicists as a profession are responsible for more death than pretty much anything else I can quickly think of. People are dying from heart disease all the time, very often in predictable conditions. Literally millions every year. Statistically this means we should hear about such failed procedures many many more times than we do now - there is literally no…

100% agree. I think the unsolved meta problem here is large-scale game theoretic stalemates where we all lose in grand ways, and yet nobody can bust out of their local incentives.

To do so successfully would require thousands of unacquainted people to coordinate changes (against their backdrop of incentives) simultaneously.

Governments are made for this but after a certain size and complexity, their people get stuck in the same frontier of stuck incentives.

A horribly-written but salient book about this is “Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck”: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B076Z64CPG

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#310

Post by bsder »

inglor_cz wrote: post #224
bsder wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is even simpler than that. Someone who has served their time in prison and is now released is considered to have paid their debt to society. You may think, as I do, that this man served nowhere near what he should have for the crime he committed. However, the law has been followed and he is no longer in prison. If the people the New York Post is targeting think that he should still be punished, then he should stil…

I do not want to sound like a person who would deny ex-prisoners medical care (I wouldn't), but legal disabilities even today do not end with your release from prison. For example, felons in the US are banned from owning guns even after they served their time. Do you consider that good or bad?

> For example, felons in the US are banned from owning guns even after they served their time.

I'm not a big fan of that, but I would prefer that it reflect the harm done from the crime and the statistics surrounding recidivism.

A simple drug possession offense should not warrant banning you from voting or guns when you are done. If you were convicted of an armed robbery, maybe the guns should be banned.

I really don't like the idea that once you're done with the justice system it continues to punish you. Once you are done with it, you should be done--especially if the crime was "victimless" (ie. something like drug possession where the only harm would be to yourself).

This becomes a significant issue in, for example, sex offenders. Some places have so many restrictions on sex offenders that, for all intents and purposes, they cannot comply with probation and cannot function in society. Well, if you're going to do that, at least be honest that you are simply "executing them on the cheap and out of sight" and either keep them in prison or execute them explicitly.

This is one of the problems with low-level drug convictions--the "felony" conviction becomes a poor man's "social discredit" system. And most of us from Western democracies understand pretty solidly why "social credit" systems are pernicious.

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