Livestreaming gynecological surgery is crossing the limit

In the age of livestreaming, everything seems possible online. But some things should not be tolerated – say a gynecological surgery as it requires a high degree of privacy.

The police in East China's Rizhao announced Tuesday evening that they have detained a doctor for allegedly livestreaming a gynecological surgery of a patient. The account of the male doctor was also permanently banned by China's video-sharing platform Bilibili.

The event drew much attention after a netizen said he saw the live broadcast that exposed the private parts of the patient on Saturday afternoon on Bilibili.

For any career, professional skills are important, yet professional ethics cannot be ignored. In the operation room, the doctor betrayed the trust of his patient as he crossed the limit of what is permissible.

Code of ethics cannot be emphasized too much in any profession. It’s not clear whether there is an ethics committee in the Rizhzao Hospital, where the doctor was performing the surgery, and whether training and supervision on professional ethics were conducted regularly.

In the era of video streaming, everyone can be a cameraman and can easily upload content online, thanks to the various video-sharing platforms. As everyone is looking for popularity and online traffic, it is also those platforms’ responsibility to review the content to block inappropriate ones.

After all, the internet should not be a place where rules do not apply.