This reminds me of
Greenwald post from earlier this year in which he compared the respective roles of lawyers and doctors in a way I had never considered. Basic question: Why is the attorney's role purely advisory, whereas the doctor's role (in conjunction with the gov't) parental? Excerpt:
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Often times in [an attorney-client] relationship, there is as much at stake as there is in a doctor-patient relationship -- the individual's life savings, or financial security, or liberty, or even (in the rarest of cases), their life.
Yet the decision about what to do
always remains the client's. The lawyer can advise them, warn them, urge them in the strongest possible terms not to opt for Choice X because Choice X is stupid, self-destructive, risky, irrational, etc. But it is always an advisory role, never a parental role where the lawyer can override the client's choice for his own interests. In fact, whether to have or listen to a lawyer at all is completely optional. The client can always proceed purely on his own, even in the weightiest of matters.
Why should the doctor have the ability to override the decisions of the patient? Why should the doctor's permission be required before the patient undergoes the pharmaceutical treatment he chooses?
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