Interesting study from New Scientist. Human surrogates only get it right 68% of the time; could a computer do better?
The data suggested that most people want life-saving treatment if there is at least a 1% chance that following the intervention they would have the ability to reason, remember and communicate. If there is less than a 1% chance, people generally say they would choose not to have the treatment.“The difference between zero and 1% is all the difference in the world for someone,” says Wendler.
Related posts:
- Paul Ravetz: Can the art of medicine exist in the computer age?
- Computer vs doctor
- Calling health care a right limits opposition and crushes dissent
- Computer Characters Tortured for Science
- What’s wrong with profit-driven health care?
- Again: More health care is not better health care
- Universal health care and the physician shortage
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I think the difference between zero and 1% is that in my experience a physician can’t say “This guy’s just meat. Let’im go” unless the patient is already gone.
My Dad’s onocologist was cornered by my desperate step mom when it was “time”. She forced him to respond to “CAN HE LIVE???”. The doctor felt compelled to not act like God and said “Maybe 1%.” This led to 9 horrific days of ICU ventilator, full pressors, total sepsis, and finally I had to get the hospital’s ethics committee to say enough was enough. All this even though Dad told me just before he was put on the vent that he didn’t want it. But I was only the daughter. She was the wife. She wasn’t there to hear him say no because she was so busy terrorising the doctor in the hallway. Sad, sad, sad.
Not the doctor’s fault. He was put in an impossible situation.
A computer has no ulterior motive. Many times the surrogate decision maker does.
And, as the above poster correctly pointed out, sometimes the doctors do as well.
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