Hospitals should always treat life as more important than anything else. When a person is at critical condition, what matters to doctors should be life, and at such a critical moment, even if without the consent of family members, they are supposed to conduct the necessary operation.

Gao Yongfeng (Yanzhao Evening News): It's ridiculous if hospitals value the non-violation of laws and regulations more than a patient's life. Actually some detailed regulations in the health system have become a time bomb and the occurrence of more Li Liyun-like tragedies is only a matter of time.

In line with relevant health regulations, no matter how simple a medical treatment is, as long as it may harm patients, the hospital has to ask patients or their family members for permission. This regulation will always put the hospital at an advantageous position in case of any medical malpractice dispute.

Hospital regulations and systems need to be respected and further improved, but it is also important for hospitals to act in a more flexible way when emergencies do occur. The system is not supposed to outweigh a citizen's right of enjoying life.

Hospitals should not have too much power

Wang Lin (Guangzhou Daily): According to the Administrative Regulations on Medical Institutions, when a surgical operation is to be performed, doctors must have permission from the patient or his/her family members. From the legal point of view, the hospital should not to be blamed for Li Liyun's death. To conduct an operation is a risk at all times, so if doctors insist on doing it regardless of the patient or the family's opinions, how is the unexpected occurrence to be handled?

Some people may argue that hospitals should be exempted from punishment if the operation is conducted to save a patient's life. The problem is how can we tell that the operation is done for the purpose of saving life, instead of economic benefits? If hospitals are given the decisive right of conducting an operation, then no one can guarantee that some profit-centered hospitals would not decide to conduct a Caesarean on every pregnant woman in order to make more money.

Whether to receive an operation or not is a patient's right and this is confirmed by current laws. Only when the patient is too ill to express his/her ideas clearly will this right be transferred to the family members. Besides, who can be certain that if hospitals have the right to decide, a tragedy like that of Li Liyun will not happen again?

Yang Zhizhu (New Express): Just as law-savvy lawyers are not allowed to freely deal with their clients' properties, doctors can't force patients to have an operation because they are more medically capable than the patients. Otherwise, knowledge and science will become a murderer.

Actually, whether an operation will succeed or not depends on the surgeons' ability to deal with the situation, not on permission from patients or the family members.

When a patient is too ill to express his/her ideas and the family members are absent, the hospital is entitled to conduct proper management in the patient's interests. In principle, proper management can't be conducted against the patient's will, but when the patient is thinking of something unacceptable, say, killing himself, doctors can go against that person's will, let alone the family's requirements.

In this sense, doctors at Chaoyang Hospital should have saved Li Liyun's life as this will ensure her basic right of survival. However, proper management is not compulsory.

Zhuo Xiaoqin (Procuratorial Daily): It is a common practice that hospitals should always put the life of their patients first and when emergencies occur, to save a patient's life is the most important thing. However, in these cases, to some extent, the right to know seems a more important principle. Since a medical operation may well do harm to a person, it is necessary for patients and their family members to know about the situation. If the action is taken without consent, this is already a violation of the patients' rights.

In the case of Li Liyun, too much attention has been paid to the husband's refusal to have his wife operated on and many believe that the hospital's inaction is the major reason for her death. Actually, this presumption is misleading the public.

The relationship between patients and hospitals should be a harmonious one based on mutual trust. However, in the current market economic environment, this ideal situation is no longer true. The key is that patients and hospitals may conflict with each other because of respective interests. In this case, laws must play a role in restricting hospitals from taking actions that may hurt patients' interests, that is, patients must have the final say on their own cases.

Therefore, we don't like to see hospitals have the right to impose operations or certain treatments on patients. Loosened controls in this regard might seem effective ostensibly, but fundamentally they threaten the patients' basic rights and interests.