x_staff | What happened?

There's tape in my desk drawer. Can't answer the other.

I need masking or duct tape. Thanks anyway, though.

Try the art room? Or the kid's craft closet.

Something went boom. No one's raised a security alarm, so I assume we haven't been attacked.

Gosh, I'd be able to let people know if it was something requiring medical assistance, but apparently that would be unethical.

Forge, stop. I'm sorry, but this is important. I can't read Samson's files unless I have student and their parent/guardian's consent even though information that's in there could be useful to me as their counselor. The only time it can ever become any of my business without explicit consent is when there's a clear threat to self or others, or when an abused party is such that they're incapable of giving consent themselves. I'm pretty sure medical issues are the same way for you as a security officer. Until it reaches the point where it becomes impossible not to let us know what's going on, confidentiality attaches.

I'm not a doctor, but I've lived on Muir and I've worked in hospitals. Some people will not seek help unless their privacy is assured. It has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with the patient. So let it go.

You haven't heard anything about Scott, which means there's not an emergancy. So that's all I need to know for now.

Well, there could be a medical emergency. But as others have pointed out, I'm not "essential personnel", so my job's just to sit here and shut up and be content with my ignorance until someone throws up their hands and proclaims something impossible, and I get to be the attempt of last resort yet again.

You know, maybe I'll cheer myself up by giving Haroun a call and see how that walking's working out for him. Or asking Marius how his lungs feel today. Or any of those other folks who have a lot better quality of life due to my apparent disregard for outmoded and archaic medical tradition.

I don't think anyone's denying you've helped save lives, or have ever been anything but thankful you're willing to try. I don't think there's ever been any question of the results. There's a reason why the medical staff asks for your help sometimes. But your right to help doesn't entitle you to take away anyone else's right to choose.

I hate that we have the same brain sometimes.

Just because you know I'm anorexic doesn't mean you're allowed to read my medical files. Just because taking away free will would make things easier doesn't mean that free will isn't more valuable. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Ends do not justify means. You already know that.

If you see someone bleeding, you can help. If you don't see someone bleeding, you're not allowed to make them strip naked in order to check.

No, the ends don't justify the means. But I also know that you make exceptions for the exceptional. There are things you do not violate "for the greater good". I just don't think archaic medical traditions and people's fragile egos and sense of self-important privacy merit the ignoring of a potential threat or not being able to look out for more important interests.

You don't think that someone's sense of security and self-worth is important?

Important, yes. A higher priority than my own, no. Unlike some other people, I prefer to keep an open mind and not rely on some Hippocratic code to decide for me what the priority of ethics are. Like Haller said, this concept of medical confidentiality can be broken if a more important matter is at stake: someone's life, someone's well-being, or in the case in question, interests that I deemed more important than someone's doctor/patient relationship.

If that makes people uncomfortable, they can rest assured knowing that I now have no more access to that data.

Honestly, yes, I do think that it's a very good thing that you have no access to that data. Your priorities are not more important than my ability to trust in my doctors.

The problem, Forge, is this. If I do not trust the people who care for my health, I won't let them care for my health. Instead of telling them I have a problem, I will hide it, at all costs. Which makes things more dangerous in the future, not less.

You abused the privilege and you shouldn't have it anymore. I'm just deeply glad that most of my files aren't available here because I use outside physicians.

And I suppose reading Marius' medical chart without permission when it gave me the information I needed to keep his lungs from imploding was an abuse of the privilege as well? No, the ends don't justify the means, but there are exceptions to every rule. And I suppose if people have problems with that, then it follows that the best solution is to not permit the situation to occur again.

Next time I try and save someone's life, I'll make sure I get all the proper forms and permission slips signed.

Respect for the dignity and personhood of other people is what makes us different than Magneto.

Or do you disagree that putting a collar on me for the greater good of mutantkind was a bad use of genius?

No, putting a collar on you and forcing a separate personality into your head wasn't for the good of mutantkind. It was to use you as a tool, nothing more. If you're still confused about that, then just default to my personal experience, since I was the one of us who was sane enough at the time to concoct an escape plan.

I agree that our ethics separate us from those like Magneto. That doesn't mean that all our ethics have to be ironclad and exactly congruent. Moral and ethical considerations should never get in the way of doing the right thing.

I think that's the only really profound thing I've ever heard Remy say, come to think of it.

A tool that would have furthered his plan for mutantkind. Because he believes, as you believe, that he knows better what a person needs and wants than the person herself. That he should naturally be excepted from furthering his "interests that [he] deemed more important" than my personal freedom, privacy and free will.

Just because you ended up doing something good doesn't mean that you did the right thing.

Yeah, well, he's not ALL bad ideas.

Of course he's not. He wouldn't be nearly so convincing if he were. But the idea that his goals are more important than people is not one of them. When you give in to the arrogance that tells you that you know better what is good for people than they do and take steps to control them for it? Then you are not just wrong, you are acting evilly.

There is a difference between necessity and self-aggrandizement. That difference is why there is a code of ethics.

Incidentally, if that is the only profound thing you ever heard Remy say, you haven't spent nearly enough time with him.

I'll disagree there - sometimes it *is* possible to know better than someone else what is good for them. A parent making sure a child doesn't put their hand on a hot stove or eat rat poison, for example. But that's neither here nor there. I'm not arguing that you can just arbitrarily ignore ethics for either the greater good or what you term self-aggrandizement. I'm just saying that I do not consider certain things, like the sacrosanct nature of medical confidentiality, as a matter of ironclad ethics, simple because a code of medicine I do not subscribe to dictates so.

And most of what I've heard Remy say in the meager time I've been around him is usually unprintable in polite context. He's a very tightly-wound dude.

Children are not in charge of themselves. They're in the charge of their guardians. As minors, their rights are held in trust by their parents though that doesn't preclude them from still having rights of their own. You can try to protect a child from himself but educating a child works better than just barring him from doing something. You don't just tell him not to touch the stove, you tell him it is hot and will hurt him. Often the child touches the stove anyway because that's the problem of free will--he still has the choice to not listen to you. You can tell people cigarettes cause heart disease and cancer but you can't keep them from smoking anyway.

Whether you approve of the ethics or not, you are held to them by choosing to work in the medical field. As you have now opted out of that, you're not held to those same ethics. You are however bound by the laws that have codified those ethics into law.

If you tell me that for security purposes I must wear a tracking bracelet, I'm inclined to believe you because you're the head of security and I expect and trust that you will serve in that post in an ethical and appropriate manner. If you use that bracelet for reasons beyond what you have told me it is for--say, you are also performing hypothetically harmless experiments on me at the same time--you have violated that trust and when I find out, your job will be many times harder because I will not only NOT trust you anymore and work against your security measures but I will tell other people what you have done.

Free will, and the ability to, in the end, make your own decisions in life is the only thing that makes life worth anything. Acting against free will, violating free will, violating personhood, is wrong.

And you are arguing precisely that, Forge. You said very clearly that you consider your interests more important than ethics, law and the basic respect for your fellow humans.

Not all ethics. Just this specific point that I happen to disagree with.

Because it gets in your way.

Ethics of convenience are not ethics at all.

Oh, like you even know. If someone steals your prize souffle, it's not liable to turn up feeding some Canadian super-thug program. Some of us have bigger responsibilities.

Hell with this. I'm going for a drive. Call me if anyone else is about to explode.

You little twerp, I'd kick you in the shins but I've ruined enough shoes recently.

If someone steals my prize souffle recipe, I wish them much joy of it. I don't presume that I'm the only one in the world who can make it. In fact, I know I'm not since it was my teacher who gave it to me. Marcel was a better cook than I could ever hope to be.

You're just cranky because you got played AND you got caught. Sucks to be you.

Well, I'm sensing some pretty intense thinking going on down in the infirmary - I'm not going to pry, given that Moira has long since beaten me into obedience on the whole question of medical ethics-in-spite-of-telepathy.

Unethical not to mention creepy as all get out.

Well, yes, that was the whole point of saying that my wife has taught me better.

A post is up now. I am in my office at the moment if anybody has any other questions.

Thanks, Ororo. I'd like to talk, if that's okay.

I will be here if you would like to stop by. Please do.

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