EDITORIAL
Moral and legal uncertainty within medicine: the role of clinical ethics committees
1 Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK
2 University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to Emeritus Professor Len Doyal, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK; l.doyal@qmul.ac.uk
Keywords: ethics
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Several years ago one of us (Len Doyal) was giving a lecture to a group of medical students on a long-forgotten ethical issue in medicine. A student, who looked to be still in the throes of the previous night’s party, waved his hand and asked, "Yeah, but what colour is a really interesting ethical dilemma". The answer that silenced him and brought laughter to the rest of the class was, "Grey"! Most of the time, clinicians do not have to worry about ethical or legal problems, unless they work in particular clinical specialisations where they are more common (eg, intensive care medicine). This is because the rights and wrongs of most clinical decisions are so obvious that there is uniform agreement about what to do, when to do it, and why. The basis of such agreement lies in the widespread acceptance of the clinical duties of care: protect life and
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Consultation activities of clinical ethics committees in the United Kingdom: an empirical study and wake-up call
- J M Whitehead, D K Sokol, D Bowman, P Sedgwick
Postgrad. Med. J. 2009 85: 451-454.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
Interventional cardiology
-
Prostate cancer
-
Urological cancer
-
Ethics
- Adult intensive care
- Relevant Article
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
