Ethics of the Professions: Medicine

Professional Ethics have become fashionable during the past two decades. This proliferation of various professional ethics bears witness to a need to introduce ethical concerns in the exercise of various professions. In order to answer this need, each profession attempts to develop its own code of "ethics". In this respect, questions such as the following arise: Are the various ethical problems faced during the exercise of a profession different <i>in kind</i> from those ethical problems faced in everyday life? Or, are they ethical problems of the same kind, requiring in addition knowledge of the specific area of human endeavour in order to tackle them? The book deals with these and similar questions and points to the need for a different approach to professional ethics.