Re: Informed consent

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 04:24 PM 5/10/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Current regs and procedures require that patients be 
>informed of risks that have a reasonable chance of 
>occurring--but not all infinitesimally small risks.  It is 
>simply not possible to discuss everything with every 
>patient.

I agree with this, BUT ...

The value of informing the patient is more qualitative than quantitative.
If the patient is simply informed that radioactive material is being in the
test or treatment, and that the quantity of radioactivity has been judged
to be acceptable by the medical experts at the hospital, that would be
sufficient - in my opinion. I say this because, if we had patients being
informed like this, after a while we'd have a NATION of people who either
have had such tests/treatments themselves or who know someone or several
someones who have. Without realizing it they will come to understand that
radiation is being used and people are NOT dying all over the place, and
the doom&gloom anti's will have are much harder time convincing (scaring)
people with the idea that every photons a killer and no amount of money is
too much to spend to clean up small amount of radioactive material.

People believe that the presence of even a trivial amount of radioactivity
in their immediate vicinity is a dangerous anomaly, and that makes it
easier to scare them. They need to understand how common it really is and
that we seem to survive anyway. I can't think of a better way to show the
public that we can live just fine with radioactivity than to have them
understand how commonly they encounter it.

===================================
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(650) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu
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