Medical Ethics: Some Uses, Abuses, and Limitations

Abstract

A backlash against medical ethics may be developing because of a misunderstanding of its purpose and limitation. A primary role of medical ethics is to "structure" the disputed issues--i.e., by detailing the relevant principles and implications, analyzing the pivotal concepts, and focusing on the relevant facts. Medical ethics is limited by being unable to discriminate finely, so that a single line of action can seldom be determined by moral criteria alone. Underlying many criticisms of medical ethics is the failure to realize that medical ethics as such is not a reform movement or an effort to inspire moral behavior, that it is not and cannot be a specialist's body of esoteric knowledge, that it requires facts and conceptual analyses from other fields to do its work, and that value arguments can be carried farther than one generally expects.