Abstract

In the context of military medical care, Eisenstein and colleagues have introduced the notion ‘left of bang intervention in trauma’, which refers to interventions administered before trauma to reduce morbidity and mortality after injury. This paper responds to Eisenstein and colleagues’ ethical analysis of such interventions, highlighting the difficulty in distinguishing between purely prophylactic and enhancing interventions. This response also addresses legal issues that arise from left of bang interventions under human rights law and the law of armed conflict, in particular the questions as to whether the consent of service members would need to be obtained and whether the adversary would as a consequence be authorised to resort to more injurious weapons.