Medical ethics.

The relevance of medical ethics to daily practice should be obvious to all doctors, but the relationship between 'ethics and practice' raises many complex moral issues. 'Medical ethics is not a new subject, but a vital aspect of all medical practice, the implications of which must be made explicit throughout medical education'.' The key word is 'explicit', because morality is a serious and abstract topic, even in medicine. Some doctors recoil from it, because of the jargon associated with it. Samuel Butler once said 'The foundations of morality are like other foundations; if you dig too much about them the superstructure will come tumbling down'. I will try therefore to be both explicit and short-lived, and will not dig too deeply into the moral foundations, just enough to prepare students and young doctors for moral decision-making.