Published 15 June 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2414
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b2414

Views & Reviews

Personal View

Who would want to be medicine’s sacrificial lamb?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Audiences can be fickle things. Recently I clambered down from my ivory tower and emerged, blinking, on to a brilliantly lit podium at the Cheltenham science festival. The theme of the evening was "Playing God—risk in surgery." I was on a panel with two surgeons, but my job was to do the ethics. I figured that the live issue would be about balancing paternalism and autonomy. Was there a limit to the amount of risk a patient could be asked to take on? Could illness and the possibility of death be coercive? Could an ambitious surgeon, keen to make a name, lead the desperate into taking impossible and mutilating risks?

How rose tinted must be the windows of the ivory tower. I could not have been more wrong. A charming cardiac surgeon took us on a walk down memory lane, a long, long walk back to the good old, bad . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Individual or public good

Fiona Godlee
BMJ 2009 338: b2475. [Extract] [Full Text]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

The ambivalence of the public

Alastair M Santhouse
bmj.com, 24 Jun 2009 [Full text]

Online poll

Find out more here>> and here>>