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Sure,but where you started out was where the doctors were actually advocating for what they believed was the best solution, but were wrong. That isn't an ethical problem.
If a doctor is recommending something they know to be harmful, i've already said they should be dealt with however their local area prefers.
But a doctor who is trying to do their best and is wrong, should be advocating for what they think is in the patients best interest. And the patient or parent can accept that or not. If they are being lied to that is different, but the situation we are discussing is one where they don't lie, they themselves are wrong, but well intentioned.
Otherwise we wouldn't have been talking about whether intentionally doing harm was worse than trying to help but doing harm anyway remember?
This is why the first time round, i was trying to understand your actual position, because you kind of keep equivocating between these doctors are well intentioned and these doctors know they are wrong. And so your arguments keep criss-crossing over that point. You initially talk about them as if they are well intentioned but incorrect, but then your arguments assume they are lying, pushy assholes. But someone who is genuinely well intentioned and actively trying to get the best outcome for the patient is highly unlikely to be a lying pushy asshole (most doctors in my experience are distinctly not Gregory House M.D.)
My arguments are based on us talking about people who are genuinely well intentioned. A good person who is wrong is highly unlikely to lie to a patient about treatment because from his perspective he doesn't have to. The facts are on his side. This is the best option.
What are you talking about? Of course it is. Lobotomists thought lobotomies were the best solution, ovariotomists thought ovariotomies were the best solution, etc., etc., etc. None of that absolves them of the violation of ethics they comitted.
There is, again, pages upon pages of various ethical guidelines that medical practitioners have to follow, they usually don't get to circumvent them with "I think this will yield the best results". Why do you want transgender care to be handled differently?
Yes, so are mine. There is a certain type of "genuinely good intentions" that are used to justify lying, and sometime much, much worse. This is the entire basis of me calling some types of well-intentioned behavior just as bad as ill-intentioned behavior, and transgender care would be a very salient example. They have been caught lying in public and in private, and they have been doing so systemically. They do have good intentions though.
By the way - please stick to a single subject, and limit yourself to advocating only for things you actually believe. We've went from the abstract topic of judging well-intentioned behavior just as bad as ill-intentioned bahvior, to the ins and outs of transgender care, and back again. Nothing we talked about in the middle was necessary to reach this point, and it comes off as throwing spaghetti at the wall.
This is a discussion and a conversation, not a debate being scored. It goes where it goes that's the beauty of this format. So no, I won't stick to a single point, any more than you have. You don't get to set the rules in a conversation. That is not how this works. If I go on a tangent you don't want to talk about, just don't follow me down that path. Neither of ys get yo control what the other says, just what we do.
Do you have examples of where you think doctors have lied to their patients (or the parents of their parients) in this frame?
Doctors who lobotomized patients when that was the prevailing medical consensus were not themselves behaving unethically at the time. This is critical because it one of the reasons I am not a progressive. The most ethical doctor in the world who looked at all the reearch and thought, sounds like this is exactly what my patient needs is not being unethical. He is just wrong and ignorant. A doctor who did it today, knowing better would be unethical.
If we discover tomorrow that heart transplants are slowly destroying the planet, that doesn't mean heart surgeons were unethical to do it.
Lets say for the sake of argument you are correct that doctors themselves are being hoodwinked by WPATH. But that doesn't mean Dr Smith who is following the guidelines (but had no hand in writing them) is being unethical himself. Being unethical requires (ironically) informed decision making.
Never said otherwise. I just don't like when points are left unfinished. I try to respond to your questions, so please respond to mine before moving on.
And while tangents are not my favorite thing, but more or less acceptable, the appealing to principles that you do not actually hold, while using the first person plural is not.
Sure, the claim that puberty blockers are fully reversible is a straight-up lie. So was the claim that minors are required to undergo a thorough diagnostic process before they are prescribed hormones or surgeries. "Would you rather have a dead daughter or a happy son" is not a lie per-se, since it's not making a claim, but it is heavily implying something they knew for a fact that was exaggerated.
What about the doctor who didn't really look at all the research, possibly because what he's prescribing is new and exciting, and there isn't even all that much research to begin with, but he's still convinced that what he's prescribing is what the patient needs? How about a doctor that commissioned research to prove he's right, but buried the results when he didn't like them, but is still convinced future research will vindicate him?
I'd say he has some responsibility to look into the subject himself. The WPATH is a self-declared authority, they have no special knowledge here, and a trained clinician should be able to pick up on the nonsense (which they tend to do, once they actually look at it). If nothing else, when parents express doubts, he has an obligation to state the level of his actual knowledge, and not oversell his confidence. That said, I kind of agree. Do like they did at Nurenberg, the chain of responsibility starts at the top, and is being progressively diminished as your work your way down.
But note that this is separate from the question of whether it is possible to be well-intentioned but unethical. I assign the biggest culpability to WPATH, but I maintain that they are well-intentioned.
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