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Medical Ethics: Common or Uncommon Morality?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2020

ROSAMOND RHODES
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Abstract

This paper challenges the long-standing and widely accepted view that medical ethics is nothing more than common morality applied to clinical matters. It argues against Tom Beauchamp and James Childress’s four principles; Bernard Gert, K. Danner Clouser and Charles Culver’s ten rules; and Albert Jonsen, Mark Siegler, and William Winslade’s four topics approaches to medical ethics. First, a negative argument shows that common morality does not provide an account of medical ethics and then a positive argument demonstrates why the medical profession requires its own distinctive ethics. The paper also provides a way to distinguish roles and professions and an account of the distinctive duties of medical ethics. It concludes by emphasizing ways in which the uncommon morality approach to medical ethics is markedly different from the common morality approach.

Keywords

common moralitymedical ethicsmedical professionalismuncommon morality
Type
Departments and Columns
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 404 - 420
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

“Dissecting Bioethics,” welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics. The department is dedicated to the idea that words defined by bioethicists and others should not be allowed to imprison people’s actual concerns, emotions, and thoughts. Papers that expose the many meanings of a concept, describe the different readings of a moral doctrine, or provide an alternative angle to seemingly self-evident issues are particularly appreciated. To submit a paper or to discuss a suitable topic, contact Matti Häyry at [email protected] and Tuija Takala at [email protected].

Acknowledgments: The arguments presented in this paper for medical ethics being distinct and different from common morality, and the tables that are included, were developed and explained in greater detail in my forthcoming book, The Trusted Doctor: Medical Ethics and Professionalism, Oxford University Press, 2020. Some of this material was also incorporated in an article with a somewhat different focus, “Why not common morality?” Journal of Medical Ethics, December 2019. I am grateful to those who pressed me with their questions when I presented some of this material at the Cambridge Consortium on Bioethics, Paris France, on June 28 2019. Sections of this paper reflect my thoughts in response to their challenges.

References

Notes

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12. See note 6, Gert et al. 2006, at 36.

13. See note 6, Gert et al. 2006, at 208.

14. See note 6, Gert et al. 2006, at 89.

15. I take the ethics of medicine to extend broadly and inclusively across the several medical professions and apply to all medical professionals, such as, for example, nurses, physicians, pharmacists, genetics counselors, physical therapists, social workers, chaplains, bioethicist, and so on.

16. See note 4, Beauchamp, Childress 2013, at 7.

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19. See note 4, Beauchamp, Childress 2013, at 8.

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60. See note 4, Beauchamp, Childress 2013, at 396.

61. See note 4, Beauchamp, Childress 2013, at 374.

62. See note 4, Beauchamp, Childress 2013, at 374.