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Comment by jedc | Hacker News Reader

I'm really surprised that the NHS let it happen!

He properly decided to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Which is the only way to deal with any bureaucratic organization.

There used to be a time in my life when I'd read stuff like this and think "Only in America!".

This time, before I even learned where this happened, I instinctively thought, "Well, it certainly wasn't in America".

I don't know much about the NHS or whats going to happen to this brave soul but over here, I don't think he'd be practicing medicine for much longer.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

To clarify, the NHS is a VERY risk averse organisation. And a home-built dialysis machine is a very risky machine to build and use. Well done to the doc.

I think even a risk averse organization would realize that when the options are A) baby will die or B) baby may be hurt by untested machine, option B is clearly better.

Even a very risk-averse person would see B as clearly better, but a risk-averse organization will usually prefer option A.

Nobody gets in trouble for following the rules. Besides, the NHS, as an organization, sees thousands of dead babies a year, why should it care about another?

This is a perfect representation of the classic ethical dilemma, the Trolley Problem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem].

Risk-averse organizations fall into the same category as people who would decide not to throw the lever, because if they don't take any action, then they aren't responsible for any of the consequences (which is stupid, imo).

Unfortunately, when they might have to shell out millions if the baby dies after using an untested medical device, that's not an easy thing for them to see.

...had to add somethng here as I am a big fan of the NHS. In an increasingly litigious profession, the doctor must've known the consequences had something gone wrong and acted in spite of those career threatening risks - shows true courage. I hope (although doubt) this helps to stop the practice of defensive medicine where lawyers' concerns take priority over patients' needs. Yeah, its a little off topic, but visting a hospital always puts my building a web-application into perspective!

I'm also a fan of the NHS, but also try to recognize where it (like any organisation) fails.

Very courageous, and incredible initiative by the doc! (I can imagine a number of docs thinking about how they could do it, but this guy actually made it happen.)

Are you both a fan and patient of the NHS?

Fan when we can take care of medical questions quickly and efficiently (yes, it _can_ happen with the NHS), but also critical of some poor experiences we've had.

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