So you’re mentally disabled. And a surgeon wants to cut you open. How can you be sure that s/he never picks up the scalpel?
You could scream. But some doctors in England are trying to figure out ways of getting (or not getting) medical consent, using a group of 20 volunteers with learning disabilities and the video game Second Life. As this Economist article says, it’s gonna be all virtual nurses, virtual blood, and virtual novocaine. Weird.