Disclosure and Deception As the director of the Flight Rescue Operation, I would challenge myself to find the balance between what may appear as opposing philosophies, but actually can work in conjunction, to create the most productive protocol. I would instruct my staff to deliver truthful information to patients during transportation to the trauma unit. However, I would also advise that the information during this critical time, to be focused on positive points. I believe this to be the most effective approach because of two primary reasons: first, studies using placebos have shown the substantial effect that a person's emotions can have on their physical health. Thereby, keeping a patient's hopes alive could be essential to their rescue. Secondly, the patient is not in a position to make productive decisions based on many details of their condition at this point; so to give what could be an overwhelming amount of information could be confusing or based on research, potentially harmful. First I’ll address the reason why keeping a patient’s hopes up is so important. Since the publication of Henry Beecher’s The Powerful Placebo in 1955, which brought the idea of this phenomenon to public attention, there have been many experiments conducted to test the placebo effect. A good deal of these experiments involved the consumption of alcohol and the effect it can have on our bodies. A specific example of such an experiment would be one conducted by Seema Assefi and Maryanne Garry, two psychologists from Victoria University in New Zealand. They split 148 students into two groups and told one group that they were being served vodka and tonic while telling the other that they were being served just tonic, however the reality was that both groups were being served only tonic and neither group was being served any alcohol. Over time the group that believed their drinks were alcoholic began to exhibit behaviors consistent with those of an intoxicated person. And when asked after the experiment, and after they were told that they never actually consumed any alcohol, almost all of the students who believed they had been consuming alcohol said that they physically felt as if they were drunk during the experiment. This goes to show the extent to which our perception and thoughts can affect our physical demeanor and should be kept in mind when choosing what information to disclose to a patient in critical condition on their way to the trauma unit. Professor Kant would argue that the patient deserves to know the whole truth immediately, but I argue that disclosing that kind of information to a patient in critical condition is dangerous to their physical health because of the placebo effect. Any doubt in the patients mind as to whether they are going to survive or not could be dangerous, which is why it’s important to be smart about how much of the truth the patient should know. You can never justify lying to a patient but you can justify withholding parts of the truth for their beneficence. Another point that professor Kant might argue is that the patient deserves to know the entire truth immediately so that they can make informed decisions about how they want to handle their situation. I agree that the patient should be told the whole truth before making any decisions but telling them this information in the helicopter on the way to the trauma unit is not only dangerous but also practically useless. The patient is in no position to make any sort of decisions based off of the knowledge they would gain from know the extent of their condition so the only thing they could do with the information is ponder on it and let it dishearten them. Professor Kant, as a utilitarian, would argue that a patient’s autonomy should never be violated and that they should always be told the truth entire immediately. However I, for the reasons previously stated, argue that immediately disclosing the entire truth to a patient in a helicopter on its way to the trauma unit is not only useless at the time but also potentially dangerous. This is why, as director of the Flight Rescue Operation, I would have my staff disclose only what is necessary to the patient in the helicopter until they are in a more stable condition and able to handle the whole truth of their condition.

Experimentation on Human Subjects In the case of the two French researchers experimenting on an isolated African community in the late 1980’s I will argue that had they discovered a vaccine for the AIDS virus, we should use it. I believe this to be the right choice for two reasons: any harm or suffering incurred by the victims of the experiment would be in vain if we did not use the vaccine and we could potentially eliminate the AIDS virus from ever being a factor in peoples’ lives in the future. In this particular case there may not have been any physical harm done to the villagers being experimented on but the violation of their autonomy could have a lasting emotional effect. Assuming the two French researchers did not tell each and every person they tested the vaccine on about any risk of side effects or that it was illegal, any kind of consent that the people of this African village could have given was based off of either false or a lack of information. This kind of deception could have a lasting emotional effect that could lead to future trust issues and if we elected not to use the vaccine these people would have been violated in vain. We owe it to them to make some good from their misfortune. Which brings me to my next point, the amount of good that could be done with an AIDS vaccine. In 2011, approximately 49,273 people were diagnosed with HIV in the United States alone. An estimated 32,052 people were diagnosed with AIDS in the same year.