In one episode of House MD, they decide to wake up a dying person (who is unaware that they are dying) from an induced coma so that this person can say farewell. Isn’t this seriously unethical and possibly criminal?

r/

They present the choice (wake up or don’t wake up) as some sort of a 50-50 dilemma, which is insane. It’s a no-brainer both from an ethical and legal point of view, right?

Edit: The Amber case

Comments

  1. Bandro Avatar

    “seriously unethical and possibly criminal” describes about half of what House does on that show.

  2. xyanon36 Avatar

    Are you talking about the coma guy patient, or Amber? The coma guy thing was completely unethical but doctors doing unethical and illegal things is the whole basis of House. In Amber’s case, I don’t know, it’s pretty morally grey to me.

  3. asspatsandsuperchats Avatar

    Wait until every other episode. It might not be the show for you.

  4. JuliaX1984 Avatar

    If you mean the dad so they could ask him medical history questions about his son, that story was 100% impossible in reality.

    If you mean Amber, IIRC, there was no reason to put her in a coma in the first place, Wilson insisted on it in a panic, so the story broke away from real medicine at the start of that episode.

  5. SaraHHHBK Avatar

    doing seriously unethical and possibly crimal stuff is what House is all about lol but yes

  6. Kishereandthere Avatar

    In the medical field it’s called “Off Label”

  7. litchick Avatar

    I think the Amber episode was when House jumped the shark. Just too much absolutely unbelievable twists, even for the House universe. I don’t think this would ever happen, and someone that injured would definitely not have a discussion on their mortality like the patient did.

  8. RunningPirate Avatar

    House? Unethical? Shocking!

  9. Brandybeansh Avatar

    [guy who has seen exactly one episode of House] I don’t think this House fella likes to play by the rules!

  10. chamomile_cockatoo Avatar

    This is an interesting ethical issue. I did a college course about issues in dying/end of life care and there was actually a real life case study where a very unwell boy aged about ten was in hospital unconscious and it was discovered that he would not survive longer than a few days/weeks. The medical team, along with the boy’s family had to make the decision whether to wake him up and let him know so he could say goodbye, or just shut down his ventilator and life support and let him die without waking up. In the end they went with the latter and did not wake him up.

  11. Edges8 Avatar

    its totally ethical to wake up people in a medically induced coma, ie deep sedation, ti say goodbye to their family. happens with some frequency

  12. animalfath3r Avatar

    This just happened 10’s of thousands of times during the Covid crisis, they would wake people up to allow them to say goodbye

  13. AsparagusOverall8454 Avatar

    House isn’t based on anything even remotely close to things that happen in real life. It’s more of a soap opera. So really, ethics doesn’t come into play at all since it’s fiction.

  14. RabidJoint Avatar

    The whole show is about the right thing to do versus what the law allows them to do.