 It is sometimes argued that consent and refusal to the same proposed intervention should not always be treated symmetrically, by which it is meant that an individual could sometimes be competent to consent to a treatment that she is not competent to refuse. The reasoning is that the risks respectively associated with consenting to or refusing treatment are not always the same. From this it is inferred that the decisions are not the same and that therefore, decisions to consent or refuse the very same treatment should not automatically be treated symmetrically.