Medical Care in a Situation of Legal Risk

How should one conceive medical responsibility in our societies ? What is the degree of autonomy that should be recognized to patients in the medical process ? What is the amount of constraint that may be imposed on them when their life is at stake ? What is the status of religious practice in the conduct of medical care ? The article is based on a case study – the refusal of Jehovah Witnesses to accept blood transfusion – with the aim of analyzing the political transformations of medicine leading many anesthetists to consider this case as a situation implying a judicial risk. It studies, on the basis of ethnographic observations, the different positions that medical practionners facing that situation have come to adopt.