In Ron Howard’s best film, “Apollo 13,” the NASA mission chief is told that there is a potential problem that could make the damaged spacecraft’s attempted return to Earth even more risky than they had thought. He asks, “Is there anything the crew can do about it at this point?” When the answer comes back “No,” he says, “Then they don’t have to know about it.” Oddly, he isn’t challenged by a team member who insists, “But they have a right to know!”

That’s because, at least in 1970, NASA wasn’t staffed with morons.

Even The Ethicist could answer this one correctly. “But if your grandmother is unable to hold onto the news,” he writes, “it would be unkind to keep telling her. She may still be capable of grief in the moment, but repeated disclosure could subject her to the shock of bereavement again and again without her being able to move through it. Your mother and grandmother haven’t seen each other in a long time, and your grandmother isn’t expecting to see her daughter again. In those circumstances, it may be more respectful of her to protect her from a loss she can no longer meaningfully absorb than to repeatedly confront her with a truth she cannot retain.”

Duh.

In neurologist Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat,” his best-selling 1985 book about unusual cases of brain-damaged patients, there is one about a patient who suffered a head wound in the war that erased his ability to hold any information after the injury for more than a day. He still thought he was 19 when he was really elderly, and the hospital staff had to keep mirrors and reflective objects away from him. If the man saw himself, he became horrified and hysterical, thinking he had grown old over night like this guy…

The author, who made many fascinating ethical and philosophical observations in the book, didn’t feel it necessary to explore whether the patient had a right to be horrified every day of his life because of his short-term memory loss. Sacks had respect for his readers and presumed they had IQ’s over freezing, an assumption The Ethicist apparently does not share regarding his readers.