and that's why the West is decaying. Who cares about your morals when there's an epidemic ?
This kind of bait is not needed on Hacker News. Keep that on reddit or facebook or whatever.
Decay of the west bit aside, the parent has a point. Do you freak patients out by getting them to sign things when they are already in quarantine and fearing for their lives? Or do you prioritise research and response?
related: "Conducting Research in Disease Outbreaks" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669128/
I actually find this to be an interesting ethical dilemma. On one hand, I would probably agree that this specific situation demands a degree of urgency and action such that the rights of an individual should be subjugated, to some extent, to the needs of society as a whole.
On the other hand, if we do accept that there are scenarios where this is a necessary trade-off, who gets to decide which outbreaks qualify? Could someone just invent one to circumvent medical ethics requirements whenever they prove inconvenient?
I guess it's not entirely dissimilar to arguments over limits on freedom of expression in cases where a person's speech can be deemed to cause harm to others (e.g. the canonical yelling fire in a crowded theatre). Where and how do you draw the line?