Let’s not forget that these are the same barking mad bunch of lunatics who believe that 144,000 of them will be saved and sent to heaven. They also believe that being gay is a sin, and Jehovah forbid anyone in this completely insane cult to abandon their poor, indoctrinated ways; for they will be forever abandoned by their families.

If there is indeed a place called hell, I hope these idiots rot there for eternity!

MMR is irrationally feared and another treatment is demanded. Blood transfusions are irrationally feared and another treatment is demanded. My definition of unnecessary/impractical is patients demanding alternative treatment for no good reason.

Adult patients have a right to refuse treatment offered. Doctors should not be required to offer alternative treatment, especially if it’s more expensive, when patients have irrational beliefs about the prescribed treatment. I don’t think that leads to a Stalinist nightmare. I also don’t think alcoholics should get liver transplants if they’re still abusing alcohol. I guess I’m advocating forcing them to stop drinking.

What if I refuse a cheaper test and do need prefer a MRI scan that is equivalent but much more expensive? Also what if it’s statistically unlikely but still significant that two tests would be better than one, can I demand two?

“My father needed an aorta bypass..” – how do you bypass the aorta? It’s the biggest artery in the body. What would you bypass it with?

“The doctors did it without blood…” – what did they use instead?

“I know of a hospital in Texas where they don’t use blood at all on anyone…” – but you did not commit its name to memory. How did you find out about this hospital? Does it even exist in reality? Tell us more.

“Blood products are overused…” – most days of the week the Red Cross Blood Bank makes appeals for blood donors, noting which types are “low”,”very low” and “critically low”. I have read in JW literature that normal saline can substitute for most blood products. If that were so, surely the Red Cross would not have to set up blood banks with meticulous typing and expensive storage, and hospitals would only need plants for the manufacture of salty water.

I fail to see what MMR vaccinations have to do with Jehova’s Witnesses refusing blood. One issue is patients demanding treatment which doctors refuse to give because it’s impractical/unnecessary. The other issue is patients refusing treatment and doctors forcing that treatment on their patients regardless. There’s a difference, though subtle, and yes, it is one of autonomy.

You can demand all the MRIs you like, you won’t get them unless you need them. However, I can’t perform medical research on you without your consent either, which I’m sure you appreciate. Do you see the difference?

Doctors should rightly be wary of defensive medicine, the ordering of tests/prescription of medication without medical indication to please patients and avoid lawsuits, because it’s expensive and the patients run an unnecessary risk of complications. But to advocate offensive medicine is much worse; should we then force people to stop smoking too, because it’s better for them? Force them on a diet? Make everybody do exercise every day and eat 5 fruits/vegetables? We’d end up living in the Soviet Union or some Huxlean dystopia!

Doctors are not taught to pander to irrational beliefs, but we are taught to respect our patients’ beliefs – the operating table or sickbed is not appropriate for atheist conversions anymore than for other religious conversions.

They also point to Matthew 16:25, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” to argue that one should not violate God’s commandments to save their life.

(This is from way up at the top of the thread.)

So why aren’t they against self-defense as a defense of murder?

So why did this piece make me mad the whole time I read it?

It makes you mad because at the end of the day for a government subsidized health service patients demanding more money and time than others for no legitimate reason is hurting other patients. When governments switched to MMR patients demanded the three independent jabs that were already more expensive, but even more so now they weren’t bought in bulk. If they had just accepted the MMR jab that’s money that could go on life saving equipment. The worst part was that the reasons were so obviously spurious.

This isn’t an autonomy question involving examples of Nazism, or being wary of paternalism that has plagued the health profession in some gruesome examples. Patients ask for antibiotics when they should really be used as sparingly as possible to prevent resistance. Patients demand antibiotics for anti-virals, and that doesn’t even make sense, and some doctors give in because they’re so bloody afraid of practicing medicine. Who prescribes the treatment, doctors or patients? The autonomy of patients should allow them to refuse, not demand what treatments they get unless they pay for it privately.

If doctors are taught in medical school to pander to irrational beliefs then I’m going to audaciously demand every scan you can possible have, including fMRI three times. I know it’s expensive and someone with actual problems might need it, but apparantly that doesn’t matter. Oh wait, I don’t have a massive pressure group and a bunch of religious idiots on bioethics boards because religion equals morality in some people’s minds.

Thank you for your reply. You ask how the refusal of a blood transfusion is any different from refusing anaesthetics on religious grounds or believing in demonic possession, and the answer is, it’s not. You’re preaching to the choir, for I’m as atheist as they come and I find such obscure religious conventions silly and dangerous in equal measure. If any of my friends expressed such beliefs, I’d needle them endlessly about it and refuse to accept any religiously dictated limitations to our interactions. But when I put on my white-coat, I take on a whole new set of responsibilities and obligations to the patients in my care, and I cannot let my personal preferences dictate how I act towards them.

The patient-doctor relationship is one of ultimate trust. I trust the patient to accept my diagnosis and treatment plan, and to be compliant with my instructions on medication, and in turn the patient trusts me to treat him/her to the best of my ability with no regards to social, political or religious status, to honour the patient-doctor confidentiality, and to respect his/her autonomy, the right to dictate solely and supremely over his/her own body. The trust inherent in the relationship between doctor and patient is absolutely crucial to proper medical treatment, and patients will (and should) tell their doctor secrets they might not share with those closest to them, perhaps not even with the person to whom they’re married.

To force treatment upon a patient against their will is not only a betrayal of that profound trust, it is an incredibly traumatising violation of that person’s bodily integrity, an abuse so grave it is rightly compared to rape.

The thought of being forcibly subjected to medical treatment is a staple of horror fiction; how many books and movies do not have the protagonist being hospitalised against his will, or even waking up on the operating table with a surgical team surrounding him and someone remarking, ‘it’s for your own good’? I can’t imagine anyone who would find this less than absolutely terrifying; to be in a position of extreme vulnerability and dependency on another person, and said person taking advantage of your situation to discount your autonomy and, touting personal beliefs and a paternalistic ‘I know better’-attitude, doing things to your body you don’t want them to.

So how far do we let religious people dictate their own care? All the way. If the patient refuses blood transfusions, we try to manage without. If the patient refuses anaesthetics, we must pursue non-surgical interventions. If the patient refuses conventional treatment for epilepsy/cancer/indigestion and turn to a witch doctor instead, we do our best to convince them otherwise and let them go with a sad headshake. And when they return upon finding that the mumbo-jumbo of alternative medicine has no effect, we must not say ‘I told you so’, but quietly welcome them back, save what we can and offer palliative care for what we can’t. Such is the doctor’s lot in life.

(Children are an entirely different matter, though.)