The Hippocratic oath commands Medicos to " do n0 harm " - and it is generally believed that we must agree to any procedure performed.
There are exceptions. A patient delivered unconscious to an emergency department must receive treatment to stop fatal bleeding or other mortal ending injuries, even if this treatment may cause further disabilities.
It therefore comes as something of a shock to discover that in the laws governing medical treatment there is provision for medical procedures to be forced on the patient without consent - even if that patients family strenuously objects.
It seems that with the stroke of a pen a doctor can consign a person to a geriatric mental health ward as an involuntary patient - and when so consigned that patient can be given electro convulsive shock therapy ( ECT ).
ECT is a widely feared procedure where the brain is subjected to a huge dose of electricity - with the object of this shock to restore normal thinking. It can have massive - and unpleasant - side effects and has been the subject of much controversy over past decades.
The fact that it can be applied at the whim of a doctor - without the consent of the patient or that patients family - conjures up thoughts of " big brother " invading the medical fraternity.
And what other procedures will quietly slip beyond our consent or control ?
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