Karen T, Anahy P, and Axcel V

Mr Frieden

English II Honors

13 December 2019

“Script” for Patients’ Rights

Introduction

Hook/Attention Getter: Recently, we’ve been focusing on the controversy of HeLa cells and

we stumbled across an article called, “Physicians push back on loosening patient privacy rules

in criminal probes” while looking for articles to use as our evidence to refer back to.

Bridge: The article talked about the unfair treatment of what some patients have to experience

due to the new privacy law and it made us start to question: how this was similar to the topic

of patients rights. That eventually helped us to develop our questions of how were patients

taken advantage of and treated differently in hospitals in the story of HeLa or in hospitals in

general?

Main Claim (Thesis):This leads us to believe that patients have the right to be well informed

about their medical treatment and the right to be treated equally.

Sub Claim # 1: Just like what Karen said before, a patient has the right to be well informed

about their medical treatment.

Support + Source: According to “Patients Rights,” it states “How patients need to have

complete information about their condition and or treatment inorder to make well informed

decisions about their medical care.”

Explanation (connect back to claim): Therefore, to be safe and healthy you need to know

what’s wrong with you in order to get a solution to your medical condition.
 Support + Source: Based on “Informed Consent in the Practice of Law,” states “The modern

rule that medical treatment cannot be given without the informed consent of competent

patients did not arise until the late twentieth century, whereas a century

earlier, courts already recognized that, like other agents, lawyers may breach

their fiduciary duty to client-principals when they fail to provide them with

sufficient information.”

Explanation (connect back to claim): In other words, there is now a law that protects the

patients rights to owning information about their medical treatment because any doctor that does

not provide the patient with full information on their treatment can be sued by the patient.

Support + Source: As stated by, “A not-so-many dance: medicine, genetics & the law” the

article asserts that the law in Britain protects a patient’s confidentiality and are released from

that duty only with the patient’s consent.

Explanation (connect back to claim): In other words, doctors in Britain, under common law,

are able to keep information from the patient without the patient even having knowledge

about it.

Sub Claim # 2: In addition to a patient’s medical treatment status, patients deserve to be

treated more fairly , especially those of another race.

Support + Source: In agreement with “Black patients less likely to get treatment for cancer:

People on Medicare studied for 10 years by Yale scientists” explain how black patients were

significantly less likely to get the best treatment compared to white patients.

Explanation (connect back to claim): Therefore, patients of color are treated different just

because of the color of their skin, which means that theyre are still being discriminated.
 Support + Source: As reported by “How False Beliefs in Physical Racial Difference still Live

in Medicine Today,” states that America does not have a universal health care because of race.

Explanation (connect back to claim): Furthermore, what the text is saying is that there is not

one same health care because Race plays a big part in discrimination and status which means

that there is a difference in the medical treatment.

Support + Source: Not only that, but according to chapter 21 from the book “Henrietta

Lacks”, states how night doctors stands for the fact that white doctors would steal black

innocent people from the streets and used them as lab rats for new research.

Explanation (connect back to claim): This proves how many patients get a different type of

treatment compared to other patients because doctors believed that they did not deserve the

same treatment as other people due to their status.

Conclusion

Summarize Main Points: To sum it all up, patients should not have to go through these unfair

experiences and should be well-informed about the medical treatment that they’re receiving.

So what?: Sure, there are some instances where not informing a patient about something

would do more good than harm, but it’s better to let the emotions flow out in its early stages

rather than dragging it on only to find out last minute.

Clincher: In the end, doctors should treat their patients like decent human beings and should

give them a sense of privacy when it comes to their treatment.