Dead Man Walking.

Justin has requested my commentary on the following topic:

If a zombie was brought to my hospital with wounds that would result in the zombie's death without my treatment, would I be obligated to treat him?

I have given this topic a bit of thought. I suppose the first question is your definition of a zombie. Is a zombie a human? Would his treatment (or lack thereof) be better suited for a veterinarian, as he is no longer a human being, but a creature that follows animalistic urges?

But I will submit that the appropriate medical professional would be a physician. His prior status was as a human being, and if "zombism" is assumed to be the result of a transmittable disease in the form of a mass plague, then he would be best treated by a medical doctor. Furthermore, zombies do not exist in the natural order of the animal kingdom, either...so a veterinarian would not be suited to their care, either.

Physicians treat patients in order to ease suffering and/or to continue life. A zombie is a corpse that has been reanimated, and thus is not alive, per se. In addition, because a zombie is a corpse with no forms of communication, personality rationality, or emotion (an entity without a "soul", if you will), then it cannot suffer. Thus, the treatment of a zombie would not ease suffering, nor would it continue life -- though potentially, it could continue reanimation.

This then raises the following question -- what is the ultimate goal of medical care? Is it to continue existence, or is it to ease suffering? The American healthcare system tends to reflect the former view, though the small subset of palliative care physicians follow the latter care model. In other countries' models of care, this question of obligation of care would likely not even be discussed. Zombies are evil, and they lack that spark of humanity that some classify as a soul, and therefore it is a disgrace to the individual that used to reside in that body to allow the zombie to continue to walk among humans.

But do we have the right to define "evil"? And if zombism is the result of a plague, doesn't it follow that the new life created through corpse reanimation is indeed part of the "natural order"? Since physicians are charged to not make paternalistic decisions with regards to the lives and autonomy of our patients, are we therefore ethically obligated to treat? As we are not reanimated corpses, do we truly have the right to suggest that their existence is flawed and unappreciated by the being whose existence we would be allowing to end?

I guess a physician wouldn't know how they would act unless they were in the situation.

But anyway, I have now officially graduated. I am now, finally, a doctor. But I will wait and discuss this in another post.