The law should not underestimate the desire of terminally ill patients to make a final & important contribution to medical advancement, says David Locke
- Why should a properly informed patient not be able to exercise their autonomy to elect for novel medical treatment
There are clearly many occasions when being first is an advantage, but just occasionally it is rather less obviously a benefit. One cannot, for example, easily conceive of how it might feel to be the first person put under anaesthetic to undergo a new experimental surgical procedure. It must be times like that when the benefits of evidence based medicine come into a very stark and individual perspective. After all, isn’t that what evidence-based medicine is when reduced to the personal level: the idea that enough people have already had it done to them so that you can be reasonably sure what the outcome is likely to be for you ?
Nonetheless, someone always has to be first and for every patient who undergoes a new treatment there must be a medical professional who is prepared to put their reputation and
