What medicine should you take? How should you treat any given illness? What preventative measures are most effective for you? Which vaccines do you need? These are questions that patients face every day. While many simply go along with the doctor’s “orders,” others find themselves making decisions about their health that are at odds with the medical establishment. Dr. David J. Alfandre, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at New York University has described patients going against medical advice as a “common and vexing problem,” expressing a sentiment many clinicians feel. But American law actually requires physicians to respect patients’ autonomy. A federal court case decided in 1972, “Canterbury v. Spence,” specified that doctors must give patients all the information needed to understand the risks and benefits of a recommended medical intervention, as well as reasonable alternatives—including doing no intervention. Despite these ethical stipulations, there seems to be a growing trend toward forcing people to take medicine they feel is harmful to them as well as to take vaccines they do not want. Medicating people against their will appears to be an ominous tendency, according to both the peer-reviewed scientific literature and people’s recent experience with the COVID-19 vaccines.
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