HEALTH DISPARITIES BLOG

May 05, 2009

Health research in virtual worlds. Morphine and Corrupted Blood

(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)

Recently I attended a Works in Progress lecture sponsored by Case Western's Department of Bioethics on the topic of Bioethics in Second Life.

Paul Lauritzen, who is the director of the Applied Ethics program at John Carroll University, presented a still under construction virtual hospital room that undergraduate students will use to explore issues in bioethics.

In the situation that was demonstrated, a student would be presented with a virtual hospital room that has a patient complaining of severe pain. This 'patient' is not controlled by a real person but programmed in advance and operated by the system. The room has all the trappings of a 'real' hospital room. There is a bed, a window, ambient sounds, and a morphine drip that is connected to the patient.

The student, acting in the role of a doctor, has the ability to increase the amount of morphine being administered. With each increase the patient provides feedback as to how their pain has been affected. The student can continue to increase morphine dosage in an attempt to eliminate all the patient's pain. However something interesting happens along the way.

If the student increases the morphine dose past the point where only mild pain is reported - the patient also starts to hallucinate. Continue to increase the dosage until all pain is gone and the hallucinations become severe.

This seems to put the student in an interesting ethical situation. Is it preferable to have a patient experience no pain but suffer from hallucinations or experience mild pain with no hallucinations?

Next Tuesday we'll look at virtual worlds and Corrupted Blood.

EXTRA: Here is a tech tip for researchers on the Case Network. If you access Pub Med from the following link you will be able to view the full text of the article directly from the Pub Med site.

Pub Med via Case Western.