The Montgomery ruling extends patient autonomy

Autonomy and the akratic patient.

I argue that the distinction which is current in much writing on medical ethics between autonomous and non-autonomous patients cannot cope comfortably with weak-willed (incontinent) patients. I describe a case involving a patient who refuses a blood transfusion even though he or she agrees that it would be in his or her best interests. The case is discussed in the light of the treatment of auto...

Patient autonomy or patient confusion?

A couple of weekends ago a friend, Richard, popped in for a cup of tea – a very fit, active septuagenarian who rides the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour every year and has recently started running. A few years ago he had a triple bypass. At the time, his cardiologist told him that, 'From today, you become a vegetarian ... '. According to Richard, the cardiologist told him to cut out eggs, butt...

Montgomery curves and the Montgomery ladder

The Montgomery ladder is a remarkably simple method of computing scalar multiples of points on a broad class of elliptic curves. This article surveys a wide range of topics related to the Montgomery ladder, both from the historical perspective of Weierstrass curves and from the modern perspective of Edwards curves. New material includes a full proof of a complete constant-time ladder algorithm ...

The Saikewicz decision and patient autonomy.

Ruling out and ruling in neural codes.

The subject of neural coding has generated much debate. A key issue is whether the nervous system uses coarse or fine coding. Each has different strengths and weaknesses and, therefore, different implications for how the brain computes. For example, the strength of coarse coding is that it is robust to fluctuations in spike arrival times; downstream neurons do not have to keep track of the deta...