Talk:Medical ethics

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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 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)

I deleted it: in addition to the above, it only has one citation (and for a fairly inconsequential point); the remainder consisted of spurious, uncited claims, using weasel words.2A00:23C4:4F07:1000:E5AE:B81F:145A:71E3 (talk) 20:15, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Suggestions for Article
I believe the lead section is very inadequate and does not properly inform the reader on the subject. This article also violates one of the five pillars which is, remaining a neutral position. In the section of “Autonomy” there is a missing citation. The writer concludes that the importance of autonomy is a social reaction to paternalism but does not provide any sources for where he or she found this evidence. Therefore, this makes it impossible for anyone to verify the source and confirm if it is a reliable one. The writer also violates another one of the five pillars by discussing how autonomy is a good indicator of health and that it can indicate the well being of a person. However, does not provide the source of their information. In addition, under the section of “Respect for human rights” the writer includes what they believe should be most important, human vulnerability. This does not provide a neutral stance on subject and includes their personal belief on the specific topic. The writer also does not define the terms that are not obvious and more complex. This article includes writing about Jewish medical ethics and I therefore suggest the writer includes a section about Christian or Catholic medical ethics to give the reader a better understanding between the two religions. I think it would be helpful to go back and elaborate on the history of the medical ethics so readers can understand where all of this stems from. I would suggest making this article an easier read so the audience has the opportunity to fully understand the subject. This article also does not stay focused throughout the writing and therefore I encourage eliminating some subtopics and incorporating more that is relevant to the subject. Lastly, I would suggest elaborating on the lead section and briefly discussing what the article will talk about.

Pcfernandez324 (talk) 04:00, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Feedback
I think overall the article is very detailed oriented and has a lot of information already presented. I didn’t see much verbiage or details regarding cadavers, and how they might tie into the Nuremberg Code or Declaration of Helsinki. They mentioned both of them being well-known documents to medical ethics, maybe you could expand and add a section involving the contribution both of these have on cadaver experimentation and the ethics around it. I think the article does a good job of giving a lot of background information about medical ethics and how they came about. I think some improvements could be made when looking at the headings/subheadings because they don’t have the links to the main articles in them. Those should be included like they are for autonomy and beneficence. The euthanasia subheading calls out Jack Kevorkian and is acting biased towards him which Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be. Lastly, I think treatment of family members is underrepresented. If it’s going to be there I think there should be more information added or the section should be taken out completely. I think they did a great job to keep the article in a neutral content and detailed in most of the parts. They did great job on providing the history and background. I would suggest that they could add more information in important of communication because feel like there need more editing. At the end of the section, there is citation needed. If they could fix it that would be good. I believe they did very with the sections they added and edited. I believe something they should do is try to connect the courses topics into their information more, because we have learned so much from our readings and studies that incorporating that would be very informative because of the fact that medical ethics can connect to our course in so many ways. Mitch8335 (talk) 00:11, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Reorganization
Hello Wikipedians,

I read through this article and I see that the table of contents could be reorganized. For instance, the conflict of interest section could be removed and turned into a subsection under Conflicts, from which other subsection such as controversial decision making (euthanasia...ect.) and cultural issues could be included. The Truth-Telling section under Cultural Concerns does not seem to belong there. I would suggest moving that to under Conflicts section. Section called Online Business Practices and Privacy also should not be under Cultural concerns. It should be under confidentiality and I would suggest fusing it with the section of Medical Ethics in an Online World.

I am new to editing Wikipedia. Please feel free to let me know what you think of these suggestions!

(Juliastein8 (talk) 22:16, 19 February 2019 (UTC))

Maternal Fetal conflict
I believe under conflicts, maternal fetal conflict would fit in and should be explained. (Juliastein8 (talk) 19:40, 30 April 2019 (UTC))

In other contexts
I believe this article was very well done in explaining what Medical Ethics is and the different aspects it incorporates. However, how is Medical Ethics applied in a scientific research setting? How is Medical Ethics applied in a clinical setting? Euthanasia, Physician's roles in patient care, as well as, patients wishes, are all important elements that are not touched upon in the article that are extremely important in Health Care, more specifically the clinical setting. Engaging in research and explaining these key factors are important when explaining Medical Ethics as a whole. Corrinfish (talk) 17:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC) Corrin Fish
 * My understanding is that research is covered more by bioethics, or more accurately, the school of thought surrounding bioethics grew up in a research setting, and is distinct from medical ethics (though can have influence on it). Talpedia (talk) 02:24, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

ref name=":7" Bauman et al 2013
Why was ref name=":7" (Bauman et al https://www.jstor.org/stable/43282683?seq=1) removed (Diff)? --Memdmarti (talk) 03:25, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

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