Medical Ethics And Ethical Ethics

The art of medicine and curing diseases was not always approached in a scientific way. In fact, many advances occurred between 1919 to 1939, after technological advances allowed scientists to apply the scientific method to medical research. At this time, the ethics of using patients as test subjects either for new medicines or as samples for further testing were not considered. An extreme example of this was the Nazi’s using concentration camp inmates – including children – to run painful and invasive experiments. More modern examples are not so easy to identify as unethical, however. While amputating a leg to develop methods to deal with fractures and war wounds is obviously unethical, harvesting cells to develop a vaccine is not so clear cut, as the disadvantage to the patient is hard to identify. Coming from the various Nazi testing and especially the Nuremberg testing and trials, another code of ethics was developed, called the Nuremberg Code.

Through the ages, men have been able to find cures for catastrophic diseases through scientific research. Thanks to these advances, men have been able to prolong the life span of people, or provide better quality of life in cases in which a cure of various maladies has not been possible. To achieve such progresses, scientists have made use of prior knowledge, new theories, and technology obtaining numerous prodigious outcomes. Unfortunately, there have been many who have used questionable means for such ends. The German Max Clara is another case of a man with power and knowledge of science, who has misusing them. This paper aims to briefly identify principles and standards that would have been violated these days according to the existing APA Code of Ethics. Finally, ethical implications of making a moral judgment on past actions by researchers regarding human experimentation are discussed.

According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the Affordable care Act from President Obama gives consumers more options and benefits when seeking coverage from insurance company. It offers lowering cost as well as gets more access to high quality of care. This law creates Patient’s Bill of Rights that is very effective to protect consumers from any abuses or fraud from insurance company. Some preventive services are available to many Americans especially Medicare recipients at no cost. Not just that, they also receive a special offer of 50 percent discount for any well-known drugs in the market place under Medicare named “donut hole.” The Affordable Care Act helps other organizations and programs to convince healthcare providers

Nuremberg Code of 1947 was written after the Second World War, in which German physicians who participated in the Nazi concentration camps were prostituted for unethical human experiment. ("Nuremberg Code", n.d.) The Nuremberg code of 1947 contain ten points about proper consent, how the study should positive impact on population, the need for pre-existing knowledge, the avoidance of any harm or suffering to the participants and concluding the study if injury or risk for death occurs, if the risk exceed benefits the study needs to stop, the freedom to leave the study at any time if the participants are unable of continuing, and lastly, the staff must stop the study if they believe conditions are dangerous. (Post, 2004) Although the Tuskegee study started before the Nuremburg code of ethics were established, the Tuskegee study continue until 1972 in which the researchers ignored the Nuremburg code and continue with their unethical study. The researchers failed to properly inform the participants of the study and to obtain proper consent. Furthermore, the researchers cause harm to the Tuskegee participants by not providing them the proper treatment for their illness and not allow the participants to leave the study when they weren’t able to continue. Thus, unethical behaviors continue even when guidelines were provided to the researchers and the researchers failed to

Perret, Françoise. "The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin, The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code — Human Rights in Human Experimentation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, 371 Pp. plus Lists, a Diagram and Photographs." International Review of the Red Cross 35.305 (1995): 227-28. Web.

What defines "unethical" or even "criminal" when speaking of healthcare issues as it relates to privacy, best practices, keeping costs down and instilling accountability with everyone involved (including patients)?

Medical ethics and legal issues have been a key topic in medical field for many years now. It is important for medical professionals to understand the importance of the way we care for patients, it is therefore important to be knowledgeable and aware of the medical ethics and legal issues that govern good patient care. Health care professionals must make decisions based on ethical and legal issues to performance their regular duties. However, Medical ethics is not only about avoiding harm to patients. It is rather a norms, values and principles (Ethical theories 2015). Therefore norms, values and principles are intended to govern medical ethical conduct. Ethics is defined as “a standard of behaviour and a concept of right and wrong beyond what the legal consideration is in any given situation”. In another words medical ethics is a discipline that used to handle moral problems coming out the care of patients. Law is another important discipline that often comes together with medical ethics. Law defined as a “rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority”. Government imply law to keep the society running smoothly and to control behaviour that could threaten public safety. Medical professionals have to often prioritise these terms before making any clinical decision. The following findings will constructively emphasise on medical ethics, its

Healthcare professionals will be faced with ethical dilemmas throughout their career, particularly in the hospital environment. Having an education regarding professional healthcare ethics will provide some direction in how to best address these dilemmas at a time when either the patient or their family is in need of making decisions for themselves or their family member. It can be difficult for healthcare professionals to weigh professional protocol against their own personal beliefs and ethical understandings when determining critical care for their patient.

The four principles of medical ethics include nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice. These principles were created by Beauchamp and James Childress because they felt these four were the building blocks of people’s morality. Nonmaleficence is to do no harm to others. Beneficence is to care or help others. Autonomy is to respect another’s wishes. These four principles relate to issues surrounding physician-assisted death in many ways. To begin, there are seven individual forms of PAD. They are the following; voluntary passive euthanasia, nonvoluntary passive euthanasia, involuntary passive euthanasia, voluntary active euthanasia, nonvoluntary active euthanasia, involuntary active euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide. Passive euthanasia is an act in which the health care physician withholds treatment or surgery and the result is the patient’s death. An example of passive euthanasia is a cancer patient refusing treatment and the physician agrees with their decision, therefore the patient dies from the lack of intervention to treat their illness. Active euthanasia is an act in which the health care physician has a direct contact with the patient’s death due to the physician’s act of doing something to the patient in order for them to die. An example of active euthanasia is an injection of potassium chloride. Voluntary is when the patient is requesting assistance to die. Nonvoluntary is when the patient is not requesting assistance and their wishes are unknown

The Nuremberg Doctors Trial of 1946 is the preeminent case recognizing the importance of medical ethics and human rights specifically about human research subjects. The defendants in the trials include Nazi leadership, physicians, and investigators prosecuted for conducting unethical and inhumane medical experiments on civilians and prisoners of war resulting in extreme pain, suffering, permanent injury and often death. The Nuremberg Code, borne of these trials, establishes ethical guidelines for human experimentation to ensure the rights of subjects in medical research. Herein, this writer will first identify and discuss ethical dilemmas presented in the Nuremberg case followed by three

Consequently, during World War II the crimes against tens of thousands of human research subjects committed by Nazi scientists and doctors lead to the creation of the Nuremberg Code (Shamoo & Resnik, 2009). In addition, a New York doctor infected two mentally retarded boys with gonorrhea (Shamoo & Resnik, 2009). A variety of unethical experimentation was performed on African-American males as well (Shamoo & Resnik, 2009). However, the experiments conducted on human subjects by the Nazis have been regarded as the worst cases of experimentation on human subjects ever (Shamoo & Resnik, 2009). Therefore, human experimentation of World War II consisted of a variety of studies such

Everyday, healthcare professionals are faced with ethical dilemmas in their workplace. These ethical dilemmas need to be addressed in order to provide the best care for the patient. Healthcare professionals have to weigh their own personal beliefs, professional beliefs, ethical understandings, and several other factors to decide what the best care for their patient might be. This is illustrated in Mrs. Smith’s case. Mrs. Smith is an 85 year old who has suffered from a large stroke that extends to both of her brains hemispheres which has left her unconscious. She only has some brain stem reflexes and requires a ventilator for support. She is unable to communicate how she wishes to proceed with her healthcare. Mrs. Smith’s children, Sara and Frank have different views regarding their mother’s plan of care. The decision that needs to be made is whether to prolong Mrs. Smith’s life, as Sara would like to do, or stop all treatments and care, as Frank feels his mother would want. In the healthcare field, there are situations similar to this case that happen daily where moral and ethical judgment is necessary to guide the decision that would be best for the patient. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss, compare and contrast the personal and professional values, ethical principles, and legal issues regarding Mrs. Smith’s quality of life and further plan of care.

Ethics look at principles and a set of concepts that help monitor and determine behaviours that may either help or harm people. It is commonly related to morality which looks at a person’s behaviour or manner in the way they differentiate their actions, decisions and intentions into what is considered right and wrong (good and bad). Generally ethics looks at making the appropriate decision (best possible solution) brought about on the basis of common sense (Beauchamp & Childress 2008). Ethics is systematic as it uses special methods and approaches to examine moral situations. It is also reflective as it calls into question assumptions about existing components of our moralities. More specifically health care ethics or biomedical ethics looks at principles that can be understood by those working in various different disciplines in the medical field (e.g nurse, doctor, physiotherapist and radiographer) (Beauchamp & Childress 2008). The principles are standards of conduct on which many moral claims and judgements depend on. The four main principles in the biomedical ethics framework are; autonomy (respecting a person’s capacity to make decisions for themself), non-maleficence (to not cause any harm to others), beneficence (prevent any harm, acting to benefit others and balance it against risks and costs) and finally justice (equal distribution of resources). As a radiographer it is important that a code of ethics is followed to ensure appropriate measures are taken to solve a

Professionals in every field are always confronted with some kind of ethical issues. It has however been noted that these ethical issues become high in magnitude and extent when public officials are involved. Due to the involvement of human life, an industry like healthcare holds ethics in highest regard. Even though these healthcare practitioners are highly trained to deal with issues of these kinds, their decisions can sometimes have a lasting impact on their professional and personal lives (Edwards 2009).

The essay will discuss the ETHICS IN MEDICINE : The Relationship Between Law and Medical Ethics: