Based on the circumstances of this situation between Dr. Simmons and Mrs. Abbot, there seems to be an endless amount of possible actions that Dr. Simmons or any doctor for this matter could have or could not have taken. Whether those choices are morally right or wrong are not up to me to decide, but rather I bring forth ideas that I think would’ve been better choices. First of which would’ve been to inform Mrs. Abbot that if she is unable to sleep without prescription medication that she may have an addiction. Then I think that he should have brought forth the idea of therapy. Therapy can be overlooked sometimes but truthfully it can be very helpful and it does work. Therapy is not for everyone though, and maybe not the best thing for Mrs. Abbot. If it was though, it would’ve been a much easier, effective, and safer way for his patient to go down. Dr. Simmons should have considered the option of a natural supplement for sleep aid rather than prescribing a drug that is known to be addictive to someone whose mental was not in the best place. It has been shown that they can be more effective than prescriptions, but it is all relative to a person's needs. I believe that a natural supplement to help his patients sleep would have been better than going down the path that he choice to do, which was the placebo. He could have avoided many unwanted problems, such as the legal ones. He would have not been risking the health of Mrs. Abbot, by trying to manipulate her mind into believing she was taking something that she was not. Although placebos can and do work, they are not for everyone.
From my perspective, I would consider the choices that Dr. Simmons to be morally wrong. I believe that what he was going for could have worked. It could have solved not only his problem about feeling guilty for what he done, but it could have easily helped her addiction. The only problem is that there was too much risk involved and there were too many consequences that may have through of his ability to make the right decisions. As I mentioned before that placebo’s do and can work, but not all the time. I think that he should have talked to her about it first before going through with it. She should have told her the truth about it as she has the right to know about the actions being taken that affects her health. Another path that Dr. Simmons could have taken if he was truly worried about her addiction would’ve been to slowly lower her dose until she doesn’t need it anymore. He choose to ignore what she was saying which was that she needed these pills to sleep at night. This way she would still be getting the pills, but over time she would slowly come off of them and hopefully never need them again.
One of the most basic concepts in life, I would say, is the concept of morality. Meaning the choice between right and wrong. With this comes the issue that is what I consider morally right may not be something you consider morally right. This goes both ways. Sometimes it really can be hard to choose between right and wrong but at the end of the day, you do have to make a choice. I can understand how he thought what he was doing was the right thing to do, and I can see how if someone was confident enough in themselves that they would do anything to prove themselves right. This trait is not always a bad thing, but you need to considering the circumstance for which you are doing it in and in this case I believe that it was a bad thing because he was putting his patient through unnecessary risks. Although I may not see his choices to be morally right, he did or does and well I can’t change that. If he wants to be ignorant to other options, then so be it, but those paths will always be there whether you choose to walk them or not.
Personally I know what it is like to suffer from sleep deprivation. I have been scared to death of going to sleep because I thought that if I closed my eyes that I wouldn’t wake up. Some people may never understand what that is like but let me tell you that it is terrifying beyond belief. I know what it feels like to almost lose your mind, and all of this can be brought on by drugs, withdrawal from drugs, and sleep deprivations. Along with many other problems. So when a doctor like Dr. Simmons chooses to take action into his own hands and puts his patients health or what could’ve easily been my health at risk even more, I ask the question as to why someone would do such a thing without informing the patient. This leads me to the next concept which is truth telling and confidentiality. Many of us are raised to always tell the truth, but as we get older we learn that sometimes it's best to lie or not say anything at all. Personally I would choose to not say anything at all over telling a lie, but that’s just a moral of mine and everyone’s different. Based on what I learned from the Tarasoff case, I believe that someone in this scenario should have been warned about what was going on behind the scenes. I believe that it should have been up to the doctor himself to inform a family member or the patient directly. When the man who filled the prescription got brought into the scenario I believe that then, he too had a choice to warn someone whoever it may be. That Tarasoff case went all the way to the Supreme Court for a reason, and that reason was that so we can limit the amount of damage done to ourselves and society. Informing someone such as a family member about the placebo and getting their approval for it should have been considered. That way the doctor can see if the placebo works, and the family can still keep an eye out for the patient's health. If things go south then hopefully everyone will see that what they were attempting to do was not going to solve the problem.
I understand that it can be very hard for someone to go against what they believe or go against their ethics or morals or whatever it may be. The honest truth though is that if you were in someone else’s shoes. Would you want your doctor to tell you everything? In some cases the answer really might be no. This is why you need to have a good relationship with the people around you who are trying to help. You need to be trust them so that you can tell the truth when you need to. I have no clue what their relationship was like but it doesn’t seem like it was the best one. It easily could’ve been though and he thought that if he did what he did that it would work and that she would thank him even more for helping her problems. There are so many factors that go into every situation and it’s all relative. I wouldn’t say that what he did was morally wrong, because who am I to judge. I could have easily done the same thing that he did, under the right amount of pressure. I believe that if Dr. Simmons really felt bad about what he was doing that he himself should’ve talked to someone or gotten help, although he’s not suppose to break that confidentially that he had with this patient which was that she was addicted to sleeping pills because of him. He needed to change his mindset and realize that he was just trying to help her, and that after he wrote her that very first prescription, anything that came afterwards such as her addiction was out of his control. How those things affected her was not his fault nor will it ever be his fault. If Dr. Simmons wouldn’t have made the choices he did, he not only wouldn’t have to worry about the consequences of his actions, but he also wouldn’t have to worry about the harm that could’ve been done to Mrs. Abbot if he was wrong. He could’ve given it more time, and when he had a clear conscious, made better choices that could help her addiction such as recommending that she should change her environment. The truth is it’s not the chemicals that make you addicted to a substance it’s the environment that you are in. We all have an innate need to bond and connect. When in a bad environment we tend to bond with things that will give us a sense of relief such as drugs. When we change that we no longer see a need for those as we found positive bonds that only build us up not bring us down. I truly believe that the opposite of addiction is connection.