This paper summarises the features of my paper, 'Voluntary Active Euthanasia', and a later jointly authored paper, 'Moral Fictions', which I believe are examples of good medical ethics.

Several of the papers in this issue of the journal address issues of commerce in relation to medical ethics. Dr John Keown' argues in favour of the long-established British, and more recently also European Union, policy that blood for transfusion purposes should be donated, rather than sold. Even if-coun-terfactually-it were more expensive to use unpaid donors, he suggests, the promotion of alt...

PURPOSE This study aimed to examine the necessity for research ethics and learning objectives in ethics education at the undergraduate level. METHODS A total of 393 fourth-year students, selected from nine medical schools, participated in a survey about learning achievement and the necessity for it. RESULTS It was found that the students had very few chances to receive systematic education ...

Speaking from the perspective of a clinician and teacher, good medical ethics needs to make medicine better. Over the past 50 years medical ethics has helped shape the culture in medicine and medical practice for the better. However, recent healthcare scandals in the UK suggest more needs to be done to translate ethical reasoning into ethical practice. Focusing on clinical practice and individu...

Despite the increasing interest in clinical ethics, ethics consultation as a professional service is still rare in Europe. In this paper I refer to examples in the United States. In Germany, university hospitals and medical faculties are still hesitant about establishing yet another "committee". One of the reasons for this hesitation lies in the ignorance that exists here about how to provide m...

In a controversial paper, David Seedhouse argues that medical ethics is not and cannot be a distinct discipline with it own field of study. He derives this claim from a characterization of ethics, which he states but does not defend. He claims further that the project of medical ethics as it exists and of moral philosophy do not overlap. I show that Seedhouse's views on ethics have wide implica...

background: local ethical committees in medical sciences in iran were established in 1999 in order to assess and evaluate the observance of ethical standards throughout the universities and research centers. the purpose of this study is to analyze the situation of local ethical committees in order to develop research ethics guideline. methods: for this cross-sectional study which has been condu...

BACKGROUND Ethics and professionalism are an integral part of medical school curricula; however, medical students' views on these topics have not been assessed in many countries. OBJECTIVE  The study aimed to examine medical students' perceptions toward ethics and professionalism teaching, and its learning and assessment methods. DESIGN A self-administered questionnaire eliciting views on p...