MEDICAL ETHICS, Shibin Antony

Medical ethics

Medical ethics is the study of ethical problems in medicine using the theories and techniques of moral philosophy. Medical ethics was earlier concerned with the professional obligations of physicians, spelled out in codes of conduct such as the ancient Hippocratic Oath and elaborated by contemporary professional societies. But today moral ethics is a broader term includes the loosely defined collection of issues of morality and justice in health care and related fields. The phrase is also used to refer to the  ethical believes of habits  of doctors  and nurses or to explicit codes  governing professional behaviour , such as the international  code of the world medical association. The subject has developed rapidly over resent decades into an independent discipline with its own specialities, centres and journals.  Most UK and US medical students are now exposed to at least some medical ethics teaching. Medical ethics involves the application of moral theories to medical ethical problems. This is useful not only in promoting understanding of the problems and its possible solutions, but in elucidating and developing the theories themselves. Medical ethics is at once a field of scholarship and reform movement. The letter has campaigned in many countries on behalf of patient`s rights, better care of the dying and freedom for women in reproductive decisions. As a field of scholarship medical ethics addresses these and many other issues but is not defined by position taken on any of them. Though ethicists often favour an emphasis on informal consent, oppose paternalism, urge, permission to end life, sustaining therapy and seek protection of human subjects of experimentation, a diversity of new points finds expression in the medical ethics literature.

It also means that they can differentiate between what is right and wrong and they have wilfully chosen not to tread the straight and narrow path. We learn now, rather painfully, that it is probably unwise of any individual, to judge another individual. All that we can say is that as far as we can see it, this is the way things should be done. Why somebody else should follow another path is for them to decide. But there is a feeling that any rational thinking honest person should be able to differentiate between right and wrong – and if he chooses to follow a wrong path, that's his business.

It is a contravention of medical ethics for health personnel, particularly physicians, to participate in any procedure for restraining a prisoner or detainee unless such a procedure is determined in accordance with purely medical criteria as being necessary for the protection of the physical or mental health or the safety of the prisoner or detainee himself, of his fellow prisoners or detainees, or of his guardians, and presents no hazard to his physical or mental health.

It is a gross contravention of medical ethics, as well as an offence under applicable international instruments, for health personnel, particularly physicians, to engage, actively or passively, in acts which constitute participation in, complicity in, incitement to or attempts to commit torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

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