Talk:Medical ethics

Baby K

Courts have supported family's arbitrary definitions of futility to include simple biological survival, as in the Baby K case (in which the courts ordered tube feedings stopped to a Down Syndrome child with a potentially correctable tracheo-esophageal fistula, which the parents did not wish to have repaired based on their vision of "expected quality of life"; the child died 11 days later).

This is most definitely NOT the Baby K case. Baby K was anencephalic, and the courts ruled to keep her on the ventilator when needed, which is what her mother wanted. There is no mention of Down Syndrome, tracheo-esophageal fistula or feeding tubes.

Whoever wrote this part must have meant another case. Someone please confirm and remove. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.247.219.10 (talk) 08:59, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Not

Not exactly on topic, but is there a sorta guideline on Wikipedia that ensures that images of medical procedures/conditions have been taken and uploaded with the informed consent of the patient involved? in order to safeguard patient confidentiality and all that. Kenkoo1987 09:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Bioethics

Medical ethics is -bioethics- why isn't there more incorporation between the two articles?--nixie 12:23, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

There is a distinction between the two, as medical ethics is a subset of the larger realm of bioethics. The distinction isn't mentioned yet over on the bioehtics article, which right now focuses mostly on medicine and lacks attention to agricultural and environmental ethics. Both articles need some sort of tags, since they need a lot of work. Ombudsman 02:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it is correct that they should be kept separate. I already have both articles on my shortlist for working on - but I may not get round to it for a couple of months or so. (Anyone for cooperation?) Caravaca 06:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

In my view, the overlap between medical ethics and bioethics may be too insubstantial to easily allow us to edit separate articles. Also, I disagree that medical ethics is a subset of bioethics. Rather, medical ethics is an older term that historically precedes bioethics. Bioethics was used, to some degree, to "overcome" the older approach. Thus, typically, the terms tend to represent two (or more) approaches to the same general sphere of ethics, though it is true that bioethics has been extended beyond the traditional medical ethics arena. HG 15:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC) (rev HG | Talk 03:00, 31 July 2007 (UTC))

I think they are separate (but with overlap). I see medical ethics as issues that arise out of the practice and deliver of human medicine or patient care. Bioethics can include agricultural product liability, issues such as genetically modified organisms, and also animal treatment among others. So for now I'd keep them separate and cross reference when cases overlap. Jaxbax7 (talk) 16:38, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

The Pew Charitable Trusts initiative restored

Somebody deleted my addition:

The The Pew Charitable Trusts has announced the Prescription Project for "academic medical centers, professional medical societies and public and private payers to end conflicts of interest resulting from the $12 billion spent annually on pharmaceutical marketing".

because of concerns that this is an advertisement. This does not seem sensible to me as the purpose of the Prescription Project is to remove conflict of interests from health care. If we delete this statement, shouldn't we also delete reference to other similar initiatives such as the 'Good Medical Practice' statement and the ACP/AMA ethics manual? I do not mind deleting without discussion the run-of-the mill Joe's Snake Oil advertisements, but I think this one is different and merits discussion. ThanksBadgettrg

More issues

Couldn't the issues of abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering and embryo research be incorporated into this? Or do they properly belong somewhere else?Fledgeaaron (talk) 17:11, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Non-maleficence

Writing as a doctor who struggles to apply medical ethics in a complicated world of conflicting rights etc., I think that the expression "Primum Non Nocere" implies something stronger than is implied in this article.

To begin with, it is the primary consideration (hence primum). It is more important not to harm your patient, than to do them good. This is partly because enthusiastic practitioners are so prone to bringing in new treatments that they believe will do good, without first having evaluated them to ensure they do no harm; and much harm has been done to patients as a result. So it is not only more important to do no harm than to do good; it is also important to know how likely it is that your treatment will harm a patient. So a physician should go further than "to not prescribe medications they know to be harmful" - he or she should not prescribe medications (or otherwise treat the patient) unless s/he knows that the treatment is unlikely to be harmful; or at the very least, that patient understands the risks and benefits, and that the likely benefits outweigh the likely risks.

In some circumstances, e.g. in desperate situations where the outcome without treatment will be grave, risky treatments that stand a high chance of harming the patient will be justified, as the risk of not treating is also very likely to do harm. This demonstrates that this principle is not absolute, but must be balanced against the principle of beneficence (doing good).

I shall make some amendments to the main article based on this...

--peter_english (talk) 11:33, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

A new section to the notable cases

The newly recent case of Nadya suleman should be added because of the fall out from the decision, the law to come and what happened during the entire pregnancy. this may sound exactly like what should be in the news, but i think it should be right here as a final story. minus the negativity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.93.41.91 (talk) 06:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Catholic medical ethics

There needs to be content added on Catholic medical ethics, since there is already information on Jewish medical ethics. Pope Pius XII wrote a greal on the subject. ADM (talk) 19:36, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Medical ghostwriter

Have added to a page on medical ghostwriting. Wondering how this should be fit into this topic? Do we have a page on issues of COI in publishing? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Four principles approach

The article is lacking substantial discussion on how autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice (the last of which is missing from the Values in medical ethics section of the article) are grouped into the "four principles" approach to medical ethics advocated by Beauchamp and Childress. It also should discuss the status of the approach as a widely-accepted, though disputed, theory by which many ethics cases are judged, and provide comparison with other approaches. --161.200.255.162 (talk) 14:52, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism

Removed unsourced one-line arbitrary edit by IP 115.167.5.128 from over 50 edits ago. 189.103.31.177 (talk) 18:58, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

values section needs to be rethought

The "Values in medical ethics" section is really a mess. The "Euthanasia" subsection does not belong there. --98.70.59.222 (talk) 00:46, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Historical section

Im not sure if the historical section (before 18th century) is very much correct. It states rather an opinion backed with few names, which means nothing, rather than facts and research with references. This section is not balanced.--Aleksd (talk) 17:59, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Removed the {{unbalanced section}} template because the section was obviously vandalised, still I'm not sure it covers the subject to extend it can be called fully covering and objective. --Aleksd (talk) 18:15, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Euthanasia

The part on Euthanasia needs to be re-written. It seems biased in favour of Euthanasia. It's also lacking citations. It contains: "Some American physicians..."; "In some countries..."; which is against Wiki's policy as far as I know. It should say "x physician ...." and "xyz countries..."

Steve (talk) 00:38, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Criticisms of orthodox medical ethics

What's going on with this section? It's not very coherent, it breaks up the flow of the article, it certainly doesn't present more than one perspective on the subject, and it doesn't seem terribly NPOV. 140.247.159.206 (talk) 05:16, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Online_business_practices

Medical_ethics#Online_business_practices doesn't really make sense when I read it. Rewrite this paragraph? [[User:Hintss|hintss]] ^{[[User_talk:hintss|talk]]} (talk) 03:43, 4 April 2015 (UTC)