Ethical Aspects of Breast Cancer Treatment

According to a universal consensus and agreement, all diagnostic, curative and rehabilitative medical intervention and biomedical research on patients as human participants, including those related to breast disease and breast cancer, must be performed in a morally acceptable manner. In other words, a medical decision would be “right” if it is ethically justifiable. Similar to diagnosis and treatment of other diseases, people with breast problems such as breast cancer require medical and anthropological evaluations on one hand and ethical-legal analysis, on the other hand. It is important to note that if the ultimate goal of medical practices is production of morally acceptable medical services, achieving this goal is dependent on several factors including medical team members’ internal (personal) morality, institutional policies and high level policies of regional and national health system and even, moral values of the society. Moreover, it is not only the physician who has a critical role in forming an ethical health system, but also patients and their families have important responsibilities, which should be fulfilled. Finally in modern medicine, the role of medical institutions, which serve as intermediate organizations for connecting patients and physicians, in providing morally acceptable medical care or performing acceptable medical research should not be forgotten. In this regard, noticing the following issues seems to be of high importance: ...