Teaching medical ethics and law

The teaching of medical ethics is not yet characterised by recognised, standard requirements for formal qualifications, training and experience; this is not surprising as the field is still relatively young and maturing. Under the broad issue of the requirements for teaching medical ethics are numerous more specific questions, one of which concerns whether medical ethics can be taught in isolation from considerations of the law, and vice versa. Ethics and law are cognate, though distinguishable, disciplines. In a practical, professional enterprise such as medicine, they cannot and should not be taught as separate subjects. One way of introducing students to the links and tensions between medical ethics and law is to consider the history of law via its natural and positive traditions. This encourages understanding of how medical practice is placed within the contexts of ethics and law in the pluralist societies in which most students will practise. Four examples of topics from medical ethics teaching are described to support this claim. Australasian medical ethics teachers have paid less attention to the role of law in their curricula than their United Kingdom counterparts. Questions like the one addressed here will help inform future deliberations concerning minimal requirements for teaching medical ethics.     

What is medical ethics consultation?

What happens when the field of ethics consultation meets the hermeneutics of suspicion.     

Economic and legal analysis of medical ethics

In the last decade, the antityrust authorities have stricken one after another of the ethical rules of professional societies. Underlying this pokicy is the widelyaccepted notion that ethics are simply devices designed by the professions to limit competition and thereby to benefit their pecuniary interests. The antitrust assault does not consider the longstanding, nearly universal consumer support for controls on the activities of certain professions. In this paper, the narrow view ofcompetition adopted by the courts is assailed. Focusing on the case ofrestrictions on interactions between physicians and other nonmedical health care providers, some procompetitive effects of medical ethics are analyzed. Generally, professional ethics can only change the form of competition but not eliminate it. A proper legal policy requires recognition of the consumer concern with the form of competition and therefore requires a careful balancing of the beneficial competitive effects against any attendant limits on intraprofessional competition.     

The healing philosopher: John Locke's medical ethics

This article examines a heretofore unexplored facet of John Locke's philosophy. Locke was a medical doctor and he also wrote about medical issues that are controversial today. Despite this, Locke's medical ethics has yet to be studied. An analysis of Locke's education and his teachers and colleagues in the medical profession, of the 17th century Hippocratic Oath, and of the reaction to the last recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague in London, shines some light on the subject of Locke's medical ethics. The study of Locke's medical ethics confirms that he was a deontologist who opposed all suicide and abortion through much of pregnancy.     

医学生公民意识与医德认知状况调查报告简

医德教育是医学教育的重要组成部分,在我国公民社会积极发育的大背景下,传统医德教育面临现代转型的课题。通过对医学生公民意识、医德及医患关系认知状况的调查,对医学院校医德教育进行评估,初步提出实现公民教育与医德教育有机契合,建构医德教育新模式的建议。     

法典的未来——论原则性法典

文本法律之时滞性与现实生活之变动性之间的冲突可谓成文法国家法治进程中"永远的痛"。这种"痛"在我国表现得尤为明显:为了使法律文本适应现实,即使是作为根本法之《宪法》也总是三番五次地被修订。为缓解这种"成文法之痛",学界作出了种种努力,其中最典型的就是倡导在司法实践中运用法律方法对之进行救济——遗憾的是,此种方法只能起到扬汤止沸的作用。欲标本兼治,就必须釜底抽薪,进行原则性法典的创制,而原则性法典亦是将来法典之面目。     

The legal status of clinical and ethics policies, codes, and guidelines in medical practice and research

This article examines the legal status of "soft law" in the fields of medicine and medical research. Many areas of clinical practice and research involve complex and rapidly changing issues for which the law provides no guidance. Instead, guidance for physicians and researchers comes from what has often been called "soft law"--non-legislative, non-regulatory sources, such as ethics policy statements, codes, and guidelines from professional or quasi-governmental bodies. This article traces the evolution of these "soft law" instruments: how they are created, how they are adopted within the professional community, and how they become accepted by the courts. It studies the relationship between soft law instruments and the courts. It includes an examination of the approaches to judicial analysis used by the courts in theory and in practice. The authors then examine the jurisprudence to see how courts will adopt professional norms as the legal standard of care in some circumstances and not others. They consider the legal concerns and ethical issues surrounding the weight attached to professional practices and norms in law. The authors demonstrate how practices and policies that guide professional conduct may ultimately bear weight as norms recognizable and enforceable within the legal sphere.