Borg medical practice

[Sundance]

Now that click+drag onto a surgery table is a thing, borgs can finally operate, using their scalpel or saw.
Or can they?
This is very much a conflict of laws, it's what makes the laws so interesting because as such:
1. You may not injure a human being or cause one to come to harm.
2. You must obey orders given to you by human beings based on the station's chain of command, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
One may interpret law 1 meaning that borgs should never use a scalpel or saw as it directly harms another human. Damn Hippocrates oath.
On the otherhand one may interpret operating if said injury had a weighted significance, i.e: If it would cause harm to remove shrapnel, but in turn it would benefit the human and thus save his life in the long run. That and coupled with law 2, i.e: The person was conscious and requested it, makes for a stronger argument.

Personally I prefer the latter situation, as I would like to see medical borgs having this ability, but also because it's a very dramatic and interesting case of a loophole in asimovs laws. But then how far could you go? Would you remove a humans limb and replace it with a robotic if he requested it, as you could potentially see it as benefit in the long run due to having a stronger limb? That I'm not too sure of.

Anyhoo discuss away.

[scamtank]

Pain is harm, but leaving wounds untreated is more so.

Medical borgs need some way to administer N2O without human help.

[bubs]

Damn Hippocrates oath.

you explained in your own post why this is so stupid


doctors swear an oath that starts with "first do no harm" but they dont say "i can do surgery on this g-

fuck it this is stupid shut up

[Sundance]

Damn Hippocrates oath.

you explained in your own post why this is so stupid


doctors swear an oath that starts with "first do no harm" but they dont say "i can do surgery on this g-

fuck it this is stupid shut up

Take a breather, bro.
First off, the Hippocrates oath was a joke. Don't know if that went entirely over your head or what.
Secondly, and this has been argued before the click+drag thing was implemented, that the saw and scalpel was pretty useless as not only could a borg not get the human to the table, but in the strict sense could not operate on him, as in again a strict sense, cutting flesh, never-mind even sawing bone, is seen as harm.
I am curious what are peoples opinions on what I think is something a little complicated, I didn't want to be lambasted, yeesh.

[bubs]

it's really obvious since we added it that we want people to use it. as long as the borg is entirely intent on doing life saving surgery of some kind, or some sort of surgery the human requested, then it doesnt qualify as harm.

otherwise it's like the least fun interpretation possible

[Arki]

Nobody in their right mind is gonna parse lifesaving or even merely slightly beneficial surgery as 'harm' or 'injuring', come on.

[Sundance]

It's a very new thing, so I was just curious to see what the general feel among the community of borgs using scalpel and saw, as I said before, the notion of a borg using his cutting tools on patients, well, it just wasn't a done thing, that was left to the MD or roboticist. This is from first hand experience. The only time you'd see a borg take out his cutting tools was if he was rogue.

So if obvious life-saving surgery is a-ok with law 1, what about other forms of surgery, like delimbing or debutting if the patient requested it?

[Arki]

I'd reckon that if the patient requested it and it's not going to cause them to bleed out or whatever then go ahead and lop those suckers off. It's elective surgery.
Doing it without request on default laws would be obviously super bad though.

[Embolism]

Personally I'd be pretty iffy about doing elective surgery as a Borg. You probably wouldn't grant someone's request to bash their head on default laws.

[Kaet]

Well, I being a person who like to be a borg and often play one, always saw operating on people as harm. And I never saw the point of borgs with those tools.
It was implemented in a time when you could only remove brains, but laws prevent you to do that.
So I always saw it as something put in there because the medical borg needed more doctory things.

Removing shrapnel might be okay though? I mean it is using a scalpel, so there might be cutting.
Maybe if they got some tweezers to extract it from a presumably open wound?

[BlackPhoenix]

it's really obvious since we added it that we want people to use it. as long as the borg is entirely intent on doing life saving surgery of some kind, or some sort of surgery the human requested, then it doesnt qualify as harm.

otherwise it's like the least fun interpretation possible

[Isilkor]

But then how far could you go? Would you remove a humans limb and replace it with a robotic if he requested it, as you could potentially see it as benefit in the long run due to having a stronger limb? That I'm not too sure of.

I believe that administering a treatment is not harm as long as it is medically indicated. I.e. injecting atropine in somebody who has been hit with sarin, or using pentetic acid as an anti-rad/anti-tox treatment. Both of these cause minute amounts of "harm" in the literal sense, but alleviate far bigger problems that the patient may have. Similarly, doing surgery to remove staples, shrapnel or bullets would also be acceptable.

Performing amputations to attach robotic limbs, on the other hand, is a completely different issue. This is a procedure that's never going to be necessary for the target's short-term well-being, especially since you cannot replace the amputated limb yourself, and even the long-term advantages are rather vague.

[Krisk]

Maybe we can move away from the Asimov again and change the law to: 1. Do not kill, stun, or otherwise attack humans.

[BillyMays]

Maybe we can move away from the Asimov again and change the law to: 1. Do not kill, stun, or otherwise attack humans.

You would have to remove stun since the only way the AI can defend itself is its turrets on stun mode.

[Chike101]

Just do it if they request it. The tools are there. However, if you're doing surgery on people just to be an asshole, however, you're breakin da law. Be nice, don't worry about it, don't be shit, and there isn't a problem.