This document was developed by prosecutor A. Josephus Jitta, Chief, Office of Justice, Alkmaar, The Netherlands, with assistance from physicians and is typical of the euthanasia report forms completed by medical examiners and coroners In The Netherlands.

In order to conduct medical examinations, physicians transform patients from social subjects into medical objects. The routines associated with conducting medical examinations constitute rituals for effecting this transformation: moving from public space to private space; changing into ritual costumes; taking up ritual positions in an examination room; conducting ritual verbal and physical examinations. The transformations endow participants with a different ontological status from the one they hold in everyday life. They address the phenomenological problem of how a (...) self is inserted into a body. (shrink)

Polnische zivile Zwangsarbeiter, die für den Arbeitseinsatz im nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Reich vorgesehen waren, mussten – bevor sie die deutsche Grenze passierten – medizinisch untersucht und entlaust werden. Damit wollten die deutschen Arbeitsbehörden sicherstellen, dass nur arbeitsfähige Personen, die frei von Infektionskrankheiten und Ungeziefer waren, nach Deutschland deportiert wurden. Im Beitrag diskutiere ich, inwiefern die medizinischen Untersuchungen als Techniken der Verdinglichung und Entmenschlichung der Zwangsarbeitenden betrachtet werden können. Dabei steht die Frage im Vordergrund, wie die NS-Behörden „Arbeitsfähigkeit“ definierten, denn das medizinische (...) Urteil über die Arbeitsfähigkeit war entscheidend bei der Auswahl der ausländischen Arbeitskräfte. Ich zeige, dass Faktoren wie Arbeitskräftebedarf, Zwang und Gewalt die Definition von Arbeitsfähigkeit maßgeblich beeinflussten, und stelle damit das Urteil über die Arbeitsfähigkeit der Zwangsarbeitenden in den Kontext der ideologischen und ökonomischen Prämissen des NS-Systems. (shrink)

A linguistic barrier between healthcare professional and patient is a challenging experience for both parties. In many cases, the absence of formally trained medical interpreters necessitates that an informal interpreter, drawn from the immediate environment, be used to facilitate communication. While the presence of an interpreter in a medical interview raises many questions about the effectiveness of the communication between healthcare professional and patient, it also gives rise to new speculations revolving on patient rights, medical ethics and (...) patient privacy. In this article we examine the concept of communication competency in medical interviews, as well as translation theory, and link these theories to Western medical ethics in order to identify potential areas in which informal interpretation could impact on the patient. (shrink)

The Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs of the American Medical Association examines physicians’ professional ethical responsibility in the event that the security of patients’ electronic records is breached.

Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) argue for a framework to examine the ethical issues associated with genetic screening for non-medical traits in the context of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Such s...

Physicians in Islamic countries might be requested to participate in the Islamic legal code of qiṣāṣ, in which the victim or family has the right to an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. Qiṣāṣ is only used as a punishment in the case of murder or intentional physical injury. In situations such as throwing acid, the national legal system of some Islamic countries asks for assistance from physicians, because the punishment should be identical to the crime. The perpetrator could not be punished without a (...) physician’s participation, because there is no way to guarantee that the sentence would be carried out without inflicting more injury than the initial victim had suffered. By examining two cases of acid throwing, this paper discusses issues related to physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ from the perspective of medical ethics and Islamic Shari’a law. From the standpoint of medical ethics, physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ is not appropriate. First, qiṣāṣ is in sharp contrast to the Hippocratic Oath and other codes of medical ethics. Second, by physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ, medical practices are being used improperly to carry out government mandates. Third, physician participation in activities that cause intentional harm to people destroys the trust between patients and physicians and may adversely affect the patient–physician relationship more generally. From the standpoint of Shari’a, there is no consensus among Muslim scholars whether qiṣāṣ should be performed on every occasion. We argue that disallowing physician involvement in qiṣāṣ is necessary from the perspectives of both medical ethics and Shari’a law. (shrink)

What do the terms sex and gender identity, or gender history, mean in a medical context? When does it matter to a healthcare professional whether a patient has male or female reproductive biology?...

ABSTRACT Objectives: the purpose of this study is to explore laypersons’ attitudes towards and experiences of medical research, and to compare them with those of physicians in Japan. Designs and Participants: fourteen Japanese adults from the general public and seven physicians participated in one of three focus interviews. Setting: Osaka, Japan. Results: trust and distrust in the physician by whom the participants were invited to participate in research played a considerable role in their decisions about participation. That the participants (...) felt an obligation to participate was also expressed. The lay participants perceived medical research as something entirely outside of their world. A greater willingness to volunteer for research was expressed if there were direct benefits to themselves or their families. Research methods such as use of placebos, double blinds, and randomisations seemed to cause negative attitudes to medical research. All physicians were convinced of the need for medical research, including double‐blinded randomised control trials, and its significant role in medical progress. Most physicians thought that the greater awareness of the need for medical research in the community and a better understanding of the psychology of potential research participants were necessary and urgent. Conclusions: there is a good possibility that the lay public and medical professionals have sharply different beliefs about and attitudes towards every aspect of medical research. Building up a better and equal patient‐doctor relationship based on trust is a key issue in medical research, and it is mandatory to fill the gap in perception regarding medical research between them through fully informed debates. (shrink)

Parents whose child is diagnosed with a serious disease such as trisomy 18 first rely on the medical community for an accurate description and prognosis. In the case of trisomy 18, however, many families are told the disease is “incompatible with life” even though some children with the condition live for several years. This paper considers parents’ response to current medical discourse concerning trisomy 18 by examining blogs written by the parents of those diagnosed. Using interpretive humanistic reading (...) and foregrounding Cathryn Molloy’s recuperative ethos theory, we find that parents demonstrate recuperative ethos in response to physicians’ descriptions of trisomy 18, particularly in rhetoric addressing survival, medicalized language, and religious and/or spiritual rhetoric. We argue that, by using language such as “incompatible with life,” physicians distance themselves from families, creating not care, but the very gulf that requires recuperation. We conclude that medical professionals would do well to engage with the trisomy 18 community—including learning from blogs and online forums— employ palliative care practices, and seek more accurate, descriptive language that is compatible with care. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In this article I propose to reframe debates about ideals of emotion in medicine, abandoning the current binary setup of this debate as one between ‘clinical detachment’ and empathy. Inspired by observations from my own field work and drawing on Sky Gross’ anthropological work on rituals of practice as well as Henri Lefebvre’s notion of rhythm, I propose that the normative drive of clinical practice can be better understood through the notion of attunement. In this framework individual types of emotions (...) are not, as such, appropriate or inappropriate, but are evaluated depending on their synchronicity with the specific rhythms of the practice. To set up this proposal, I show how typical arguments about emotions in medicine—what I call emotion-entity focused frameworks—are insufficient. I then draw on ethnographic observations from two orthopaedic departments and interviews with medical practitioners to show (1) how clinical practice is driven by rhythmicity, shaped in the case of orthopaedic surgery by a clinical aim of efficient, controlled intervention, and (2) how clinicians continuously refer to this drive and the flow of rhythms when evaluating inappropriate or problematic emotion. I argue that the use of a rhythm framework rather than ideals of detachment or empathy allows for a sensitivity to the complexity and situation-dependent elements of emotional ideals in clinical practice; and I end by proposing the term ‘attuned concern’—which stresses the importance of regulation and adjustment to circumstances rather than of maintaining a constant distance/involvement—as a more fitting alternative to ‘clinical detachment’. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has attracted an increasing amount of attention, both positive and negative. Its potential applications in healthcare are indeed manifold and revolutionary, and within the realm of medical imaging and radiology (which will be the focus of this paper), significant increases in accuracy and speed, as well as significant savings in cost, stand to be gained through the adoption of this technology. Because of its novelty, a norm of keeping humans “in the loop” wherever AI mechanisms are (...) deployed has become synonymous with good ethical practice in some circles. It has been argued that keeping humans “in the loop” is important for reasons of safety, accountability, and the maintenance of institutional trust. However, as the application of machine learning for the detection of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) in this paper’s case study reveals, there are some scenarios where an insistence on keeping humans in the loop (or in other words, the resistance to automation) seems unwarranted and could possibly lead us to miss out on very real and important opportunities in healthcare—particularly in low-resource settings. It is important to acknowledge these opportunity costs of resisting automation in such contexts, where better options may be unavailable. Using an AI model based on convolutional neural networks developed by a team of researchers at NUH/NUS medical school in Singapore for automated detection and classification of the lumbar spinal canal, lateral recess, and neural foraminal narrowing in an MRI scan of the spine to diagnose LSS, we will aim to demonstrate that where certain criteria hold (e.g., the AI is as accurate or better than human experts, risks are low in the event of an error, the gain in wellbeing is significant, and the task being automated is not essentially or importantly human), it is both morally permissible and even desirable to kick the humans out of the loop. (shrink)

In the medical practice in China, giving and taking “red envelopes” is a common phenomenon although few openly admit it. This paper, based on our empirical study including data collected from interviews and questionnaires with medical professionals and patients, attempts to explore why “red envelopes” have become a serious problem in the physician-patient relationship and how the situation can be improved. Previous studies show that scholars tend to correlate the spread of “red envelopes” in health care sector to (...) the commercialization trend, the general erosion of traditional values, and the lowering of the moral level in the medical field. However, in this paper, the authors argue that medical professionals’ choice of taking “red envelopes” is actually more a way to compensate for their problematic self-image and marred dignity in real practice. Medical professionals in China as a whole are in an embarrassing situation where the work pressure and income, and the sense of pride that used to be part of their profession are not comparable to each other. Under this circumstance, we believe that the effective way to deal with the “red envelopes” issue does not lie solely in introducing more stringent regulations or granting medical professionals higher payments, but rather in protecting and enhancing the professional dignity of all those working in healthcare. And on top of that, there must also be effort to cultivate a more favorable moral environment. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to examine the concept of virtue ethics in Stanley Hauerwas's understanding of virtue and delineate how that contributes to his ethical reasoning and his comprehension of medical ethics. The first chapter focuses on the shift that occurred in moral theory under the stance of the Enlightenment that eroded the traditional idea of morality as the formation of the self, allowing space for new concepts that dismissed the importance of the agent in the ethical (...) task of seeking the good. In the second chapter, the three main ideas that make up Hauerwas' ethical theory are examined with a particular attention to the importance of agency in moral life. The third chapter describes how Hauerwas' medical ethics, informed by his moral theory based on character, vision, and narrative, is relevant to medical ethics. Hauerwas argues that because medicine is a form of human activity with internal goods and standards of excellence intrinsic to its practice, it requires taking into account the notion of agency in the healing relationship. Finally, in the last chapter the specific religious discourse of Hauerwas' ethics is discussed in relation to secular medical ethics. In other words, this thesis raises the question of whether the reduction of medical ethics to a set of principles, as it is mostly the case today, represents a suitable picture of the reality of moral life in medicine. (shrink)

Although knowledge of torture and physical and psychological abuse was widespread at both the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and known to medical personnel, there was no official report before the January 2004 Army investigation of military health personnel reporting abuse, degradation, or signs of torture. Mounting information from many sources, including Pentagon documents, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc., indicate that medical personnel failed to maintain (...) medical records, conduct routine medical examinations, provide proper care of disabled and injured detainees, accurately report illnesses and injuries, and falsified medical records and death certificates. Medical personnel and medical information was also used to design and implement psychologically and physically coercive interrogations. The United States military medical system failed to protect detainee's human rights, violated the basic principles of medical ethics and ignored the basic tenets of medical professionalism. (shrink)

Recent media articles have stirred controversy over anecdotal reports of medical students practising educational pelvic examinations on women under anaesthesia without explicit consent. The understandable public outrage that followed merits a substantive response from the medical community. As medical students, we offer a unique perspective on consent for trainee involvement informed by the transitional stage we occupy between patient and physician. We start by contextualising the role of educational pelvic examinations under anaesthesia (EUAs) within general clinical skill (...) development in medical education. Then we analyse two main barriers to achieving explicit consent for educational pelvic EUAs: ambiguity within professional guidelines on how to operationalize ‘explicit consent’ and divergent patient and physician perspectives on harm which prevent physicians from understanding what a reasonable patient would want to know before a procedure. To overcome these barriers, we advocate for more research on patient perspectives to empower the reasonable patient standard. Next, we call for minimum disclosure standards informed by this research and created in conjunction with students, physicians and patients to improve the informed consent process and relieve medical student moral injury caused by performing ‘unconsented’ educational pelvic exams. (shrink)

Expounds on the ethical hazards of advertising cosmetic surgery. Impact of physician entrepreneurialism on the fiduciary concept of physician-patient relationship; Expectation on physician's non-abuse of superior position; Physician's responsibility to inform patient to enhance the latter's control over personal life and health care; Exacerbation of patient's vulnerability through misleading advertising.

This book is intended as a practical introduction to the ethical problems which doctors and other health professionals can expect to encounter in their practice. It is divided into three parts: ethical foundations, clinical ethics, and medicine and society. The authors incorporate new chapters on topics such as theories of medical ethics, cultural aspects of medicine, genetic dilemmas, aging, dementia and mortality, research ethics, justice and health care (including an examination of resource allocation), and medicine, ethics and medical (...) law. Medical Ethics also covers issues having to do with the beginning and end of life, as well as ethical questions surrounding the human body and the use of human tissue, confidentiality and AIDS, care of the mentally ill, and the implications of genetic technology. Each chapter presents a range of ethical views, drawing both from traditional philosophy and the most recent contemporary trends. The theoretical discussion is extended and illustrated by case studies and examples. This book is a non-technical guide to ethics written with the needs of medical students and medical practitioners in mind. It will also appeal to students and practitioners of allied health professions, and for all users of health care services. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that exploring institutional racism also needs to examine interactions and communications between patients and providers. Exchange between bioethicists, social scientists, and life scientists should emphasize the biological effects—made evident through health disparities—of racism. I discuss this through examples of patient–provider communication in fertility clinics in South Africa and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to emphasize the issue of mistrust between patients and medical institutions. Health disparities and medical mistrust are interrelated problems of racism in (...) healthcare provision. (shrink)

Monitoring health is one of the basic principles of Occupational Health and Safety. The main objective of this monitoring will be the detection of possible damage to health arising from work. They try to discover the effects that the inherent risks with the work may cause the worker, which will show, given the case, through an alteration of health or the state of organic and functional state, both physically and mentally. Regarding the monitoring of health, there are many and varied (...) issues to be raised concerning the right to personal privacy. Thus, notably, whether there was effective consensus, and whether, in particular, the object and the purpose of the medical examination meant a disregard of the statutory scheme, an excess or even a failure to comply with the terms of the Spanish Constitution. The limits imposed by the law makers to the productive unit will play a key role in identifying the content of the company obligation to monitor health, being in many cases guarantees of constitutional rights. Therefore, the methods of health monitoring and control of workers will always be carried out respecting the privacy and dignity of the worker as well as the confidentiality of all information related to their health. (shrink)

Psychiatric examinations in official institutions of the Brazilian government include examinations of individual convicts – some of whom are highly dangerous – carried out by court decision. These individuals are taken handcuffed under police escort from penitentiaries to the examination site. In most Brazilian states, medical examiners or experts adopt the basic procedure of asking the police officers to remove the handcuffs from the convict for the examination to be carried out. This article analyzes, from the bioethical standpoint, (...) the behavior of 49 forensic psychiatrists in eight Brazilian states in relation to procedures adopted as protection measures against any possible danger posed by their examinees. In the context of a developing country, where sophisticated protection means are not available, the practice of keeping convicts handcuffed during such examinations is compared to other measures and more advisable alternatives are discussed from the ethical standpoint. Considering the dilemma between showing minimum respect for the autonomy of examinees and ensuring the security of examiners, the need to adopt equitable procedures based on the recognition of the different needs of examiners and examinees is addressed. (shrink)

Questions concerning the role of doctors, abortion, mercy killings and genetics are troubling and highly problematic. They require a thorough examination and careful probing. This volume takes a step towards tackling them. Its design is both interdisciplinary and comparative, offerin g philosophical, legal and medical perspectives of scholars from North America, Europe and Israel who analyze how their respective countries try to cope with and find answers for pressing concerns.

This paper examines the concept of medical necessity as it relates to mental health care rationing, arguing that the normal functioning model of medical necessity is insufficient because it fails to cohere with an important aim and function of mental health care, which is to provide support for individuals in abusive or otherwise difficult personal relationships.

Medical science is advancing all the time. Researchers are constantly trying to find new ways to help people to have long and healthy lives. Thanks to their work, doctors today can cure diseases, lessen pain, replace unhealthy limbs or organs, and help infertile couples have children. Doctors can even keep seriously ill people alive against all odds. But not everyone is enamored with advances in medicine. They question whether it is appropriate to prolong life in all cases, or believe (...) that certain treatments have been developed unethically. This book looks at how the ways that doctors treat the sick are developed, and examines some of the questions that are raised by advances in medical science. (shrink)

Medical semiotics, as a branch of general semiotics, has never really gained a foothold in either semiotics itself or medical science, despite the fact that the discipline of semiotics traces its roots to the medical domain in the ancient world and especially to Hippocrates. With several key exceptions, such as Jakob von Uexküll in 1909 and in the 1990s with Thomas A. Sebeok, there is no evidence that medical semiotics is a significant and growing area of (...) research either within semiotics or medical practice. The purpose of this book is to revive interest in this field examining the historical and epistemological principles that would make it highly relevant today in the global village where conceptions of disease and health are in constant flux. The book is written it in a non-technical way-that is, no assumptions are made on the part of the reader of technical semiotics. Our hope is that this book will bring out the importance of semiotics to the practice of medicine. It can be considered to be a textbook in the field of medical semiotics, constituting to the best of our knowledge the first of its kind. (shrink)

In this unique study, Jean-Pierre Clero examines medical ethics from a philosophical perspective. Based on the thoughts of great philosophers, he develops a theory of medical ethics that focuses on the values of intimacy.

Examines the use of drug therapy and other medical techniques to treat psychiatric illness, describing the major mental illnesses and discussing the effects of specific medications.

Purpose Medical students receive a varying amount of training in medical ethics and are expected to navigate clinical ethical dilemmas innately. There is little literature on attempts to navigate ethical dilemmas experienced during early clinical experiences and whether current curricula prepare students for these dilemmas. This study explores the different ethical dilemmas experienced by medical students on their third-year clerkships and analyzes the factors, sources, and resolutions proposed by them.Methods From 2016 to 2018, third-year medical students (...) completed a written assignment to describe, analyze, and reflect on a clinical situation in which they experienced an ethical dilemma. They identified specific ethical dilemmas present, potential preventative and aftermath solutions, and reflected on their professional development from their experience. The research team utilized applied thematic analysis to identify themes and patterns in the data. A thematic matrix was utilized to examine similarities and differences across medical students.Results Of the 162 reflections, 144 (88.9%) students indicated an ethical dilemma that included issues related to autonomy and beneficence. Of these, 116 (71.6%) students found the two ethical principles in direct conflict. Students identified three common sources of this conflict: lack of communication; unclear understanding of clinical policies regarding family authority and psychiatric capacity; and medical negligence. Lastly, students suggested different solutions for dealing with and preventing this conflict.Conclusion Our findings suggest that an overwhelming number of students face ethical challenges when confronted with medical situations that raise conflicts between autonomy and beneficence. Their recommended solutions reveal an appeal among students to have tools and strategies in place to ease the need to make difficult decisions. Medical students might be better served by learning about the complexities of ethical decision-making and the likelihood of experiencing moral distress when they feel an inability to implement what they envision as the best solution. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has had a lasting impact on all areas of personal life. However, the political, economic, legal and healthcare system, as well as the education system have also experienced the effects. Universities had to face new challenges and requirements in teaching and examinations as quickly as possible in order to be able to guarantee high-quality education for their students.This study aims to examine how the German-speaking medical faculties of the Umbrella Consortium of Assessment Network have (...) dealt with the challenges but also the opportunities that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic created in medical education and whether digitalisation has been driven forward as a result. In an initial online-survey we focused our questions on the current teaching situation with regard to digitised teaching content, the support or establishment of adequate framework conditions by the medical faculties and IT facilities and also the execution of examinations during the summer semester 2020.Between August and September 2020, a total of 88 examiners, educators, dean of study and/or technical admins from 32 partner faculties took part in the survey. Students were not included in our survey. Most respondents stated that a switch to a digital semester had worked, the use of e-learning increased compared to previous semesters and that most courses could be converted, with the exception of practical courses, which were largely cancelled. The respondents also indicated that most examinations could still be taken, with the exception of practical examination formats, like Objective Structured Clinical Examinations. However, in the case of face-to-face examinations, strict distance and hygiene conditions had to be obeyed or there had to be a switch to distance-online examinations, which raised many open issues such as equal opportunities of students and attempts at deception.In conclusion, we identified several issues regarding the rapid transition to a digital semester due to COVID-19 which were categorised into the following topics: Face-to-face teaching could not take place, know-how of educators, integrity aspects, technical aspects, additional personnel required, additional time and effort required for implementation of digital teaching. Our study shows that a switch to digital teaching and distance online examinations is feasible, but many problems were encountered concerning academic integrity and basic ethical principles still need to be solved. In order to investigate whether above mentioned issued could be solved one year after the transition to a digital semester, we conducted a second survey in which the 32 initially surveyed institutions were questioned again. (shrink)

Conducting empirical research on gender in medical ethics is a challenge from a theoretical as well as a practical point of view. It still has to be clarified how gender aspects can be integrated without sustaining gender stereotypes. The developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan was among the first to question ethics from a gendered point of view. The notion of care introduced by her challenged conventional developmental psychology as well as moral philosophy. Gilligan was criticised, however, because her concept of (...) ‘two different voices’ may reinforce gender stereotypes. Moreover, although Gilligan stressed relatedness, this is not reflected in her own empirical approach, which still focuses on individual moral reflection. Concepts from social psychology can help overcome both problems. Social categories like gender shape moral identity and moral decisions. If morality is understood as being lived through actions of persons in social relationships, gender becomes a helpful category of moral analysis. Our findings will provide a conceptual basis for the question how empirical research in medical ethics can successfully embrace a gendered perspective. (shrink)

Our response to death may differ depending on the patient’s age. We may feel that death is a sad, but acceptable event in an elderly patient, yet feel that death in a very young patient is somehow unfair. This paper explores whether there is any ethical basis for our different responses. It examines in particular whether a patient’s age should be relevant to the determination that an intervention is medically futile. It also considers the responsibilities of health professionals and the (...) rights of family members in situations where an interventions is clearly futile. (shrink)

This paper examines three medical student poems about death to explore how medical students use poetry to understand their encounters with dying patients and to discuss how these poems function as elegies in the context of medical culture.

In 2021, Canada revised its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law, removing the "reasonably foreseeable death" requirement. Opponents of MAID voiced concerns about a "slippery slope" leading to broader access, with some arguing the line has already been crossed. I examine the arguments against expanded eligibility, particularly those presented by Tom Koch (2023). Koch's reasoning, I submit, is flawed, lacking nuance in its understanding of the slippery slope and relying on a problematic argument about healthcare access.

Background Medical ethics deals with the ethical obligations of doctors to their patients, colleagues and society. The annual reports of Sri Lanka Medical Council indicate that the number of complaints against doctors has increased over the years. We aimed to assess the level of knowledge, attitude and practice regarding medical ethics among doctors in three teaching hospitals in Sri Lanka. Methods A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted among doctors using a pre-tested self-administered, anonymous questionnaire. Chi Squared test, (...) and ANOVA test were used to identify the significance of association between level of knowledge and selected factors. Results Most doctors had a poor level of knowledge on medical ethics, with postgraduate trainees showing significantly higher level of knowledge. The average knowledge on medical ethics among doctors was significantly different between the three hospitals. Over 95% had a favourable attitude towards gaining knowledge and advocated the need for training. The majority indicated awareness of unethical practices. 24.6% of respondents stated that they get a chaperone ‘sometimes’ during patient examination while 3.5% never do. The majority responded that they never accept gifts from pharmaceutical companies in recognition of their prescribing pattern. 12–41% of doctors participated in the study acknowledged that they ‘sometime’ engaged in unethical practices related to prescribing drugs, accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies and when obtaining leave. Conclusion Most doctors had a poor level of knowledge of medical ethics. Postgraduate trainees had a higher level of knowledge than other doctors. The majority showed a favourable attitude towards gaining knowledge and the need of training. Regular in-service training on medical ethics for doctors would help to improve their knowledge on medical ethics, as well as attitudes and ethical conduct. (shrink)

Medical screening is justified on the strength of the assumption that the earlier disease is detected, the better it is for the patient. On examination, however, the assumption turns out to be severely flawed, and inadequate anyway, since it is not only the patient with whom we should be concerned, but healthy people as well. Instead of making assumptions about the ill, we should prove a test's overall benefit to the individual taking it before we recommend it.

The correlation between medical ethics and medical law, while seemingly far removed from the context of Eastern Orthodoxy, is in fact of deep theological significance and eschatological prominence and has become increasingly a matter of concern in contemporary Russia. The following study examines different modes of this correlation and their moral implications for the wider society.