In your earlier comment you said: “By asking the question, she is doing what any good mother would do.” – but you don’t score points for questions if you’re not prepared to pay attention to the answer – even if it’s not the one word answer you wanted.

We also don’t know if she may have already …
I think the comment I made in response to Mark’s “The story is allegorical..” covers that.

what if that printed copy is nothing more than marketing hogwash …
The problem of extending the allegory too far comes up again. In a tale where the doctor is trying to get the woman to think about the alternatives and understand the facts, and and where declines to tell her what decision to make, you’re now suggesting that the pamphlet could have been designed to obscure the facts and push the decision the way the doctor wanted it made.

Yes the doctor could have said yes or no but said neither – it’s possible she repeated the question and later cut him off for that very reason. It’s a yes or no question. Answer yes, or no. By all means provide further explanation to the yes or no, but at least start with a yes or no. Sometimes I ask my doctor yes or no type questions, he recognizes them as such, and provides the yes or no answer, usually followed by a brief explanation. Also according to the story we don’t know what Ms Melham may have decided if she had received a yes or a no answer.

We also don’t know if she may have already read the pamphlet, in any case its contents are unknown to us. I agree a printed copy can help, but what if that printed copy is nothing more than marketing hogwash designed to herd you into deciding in favor of whatever they’re selling? At the risk of sounding cynical, that seems to be the case more often these days.

Reality is a personal thing, and sorry, but people disagree with reality every day. Some do it just to cope with a bad situation or whatever is troubling them. I know what you’re saying though – one cannot just deny or ‘disagree’ with gravity or electromagnetic radiation.

Cheers

Thanks for the comment:

Actually, the woman is not asking the doctor to make any decisions for her. Rather, she is asking for assurance in a one-word answer from the doctor – yes or no.

Technically, of course, you could argue that case – after all, the doctor could have said Yes (i.e. assurance that the injection would do no harm), and she could still have said that she wasn’t having it done. But notice that the doctor says No (albeit in five words: “Well, there’s always some risk”) and she repeats the question.

…expect that one’s doctor should be able to explain the options available and the risks involved in choosing one over another, and to do so more clearly and efficiently than some pamphlet

Personally, when making an important decision, I would rather have a printed copy of the arguments so that I can crosscheck the pros and cons, look for errors and omissions, and check for contradictions. However, you might note that (a) Ms. Melham was apparently unable to extract a “No” from “Well, there’s always some risk” and (b) when the doctor did try to explain “… this is less than the probability of…” she cut him off.

Part of Freedom is being free to disagree.
True, although there are some limitations: you can’t disagree with reality (technically you could disagree, I suppose, but disagreeing with the laws of physics might prove fatal); and one of the principles of democracy is that the majority is allowed to over-rule the minority – and we just have to hope that enough of the people have a solid grounding in ethics and moral philosophy.

By asking the question, she is doing what any good mother would do – ask her doctor. It is reasonable to expect that one’s doctor should be able to explain the options available and the risks involved in choosing one over another, and to do so more clearly and efficiently than some pamphlet. I believe that’s part of a doctor’s job.

In a Twilight Zone/1984-ish way, the author shows how insane it could be – but then we’re not far from that situation today. How much say do we have when it comes to things like vaccinations? Sometimes the only ‘card’ we have to play is the ‘yes or no’, and if that choice is taken away, well, 1984 here we come.

The author may also be pointing out how many people tend to take an ‘all or nothing’ approach to some pretty broad topics – science being one. “Are you WITH us, or AGAINST us?” A Redneck approach to life, that’s all. Some might feel that if you say no to any small part of science, it should then be forced upon you anyway. Others may say you should then be banished and not be allowed to benefit from science. But science is not ‘all or nothing’. People can embrace as much or as little of science as they like. Part of Freedom is being free to disagree.

As I said to Mladen, I posted the link because of my reaction to the line: “you’re not allowed science any more”; and while I think the discussion we’re having is one that everyone should be involved with somewhere, blog comments are probably not the best place to do it. Nevertheless I’m happy to bounce a few ideas around.

The story is allegorical, not historical so I’m reading more into it than what’s actually written.

I think that’s perfectly reasonable, and I agree – but I think there’s a point where you can read in so much that the author didn’t write that your interpretation moves away from the allegory. The author COULD have written the story to say the woman read the pamhplet and either responded with (a) “it’s too difficult to choose”, or (b) “you’re trying to blind me with science” or (c) “I can now make an informed decision” – any of these options would allow for a different allegory; but the author stopped at “I don’t want to try.”

I was more referring to anti-smoking crusaders and the Mayor of NYC banning large sodas and large popcorns.

I couldn’t work out quite why those comments fitted in earlier on, but I now understand – if someone wants to follow a lifestyle that shortens their life you have to address a lot of ethical questions before you claim the right to stop them. The point didn’t connect for me – even though I now remember seeing it – because it was probably a two-line note on page 27 under “in other international news”.

In the UK, of course, with the background of the National Health Service, one of the ethical arguments that comes into play is that a person who eats fourteen “pie, beans and chips” per day and weighs 450 pounds as a consequence is going to deny NHS resources to other people. Should the group explicitly remove rights/privileges (and where’s the line between rights and privileges) from the individual, or should the individual implicitly be allowed to take advantage of the group ? (Your “sex until 70″ comment, of course, is just another example of the same – is the group allowed to question how many people you are depriving of what resource when you make your choice.)

No, I haven’t been following CDOS closely enough. It was the stunning simplicity of the line “I’m afraid to say, you’re not allowed science any more” that caught my eye.

It is difficult for people to analyze their own risk, and it is difficult to apply group risk to societal decisions. Science has a particular set of methodologies, and even scientists can’t always agree on those or apply their own favored methodology correctly. Science does have the advantage of saying that replication and explication is good. However, there is information degradation when applying science to society, not the least of which is lag time.

When you try to apply formulaic solutions to societal problems, you are going to have a real issue with problem definition. Some would say engineers were among the worst US presidents (Hoover and Carter, though I think both more simply were not strong leaders when necessary). Eventually, you have to decide on what moral and ethical basis to make decisions that affect groups. Religions are about that (which can be quite counterproductive at times, since many tend to be absolutist, and relativistic morals have issues too). Complete anarchy certainly isn’t the answer, tragedy of the commons. What is needed is some level of specialization (like the CDC in the US for vaccinations), some level of trust (believe what the scientific consensus says and understand the limitations of media reports), and some manner of global feedback to adjust those correctly (uh-oh, now we’re in politics). The current trend towards self-circumscribing information channels is working against that – birds of feathers flocking together are reinforcing their own biases. It was a lot easier to be patriotic and know what is “right” when propaganda was more standardized, eh?