Modern medical ethics: Critical issue for 21th century | The News Tribe Blogs

-
Modern medical ethics: Critical issue for 21th century | The News Tribe Blogs

“If we believe men have any personal rights at all as human beings, they have an absolute right to such a measure of good health as society, and society alone is able to give them” – Aristotle

Health systems as defined by World Health Organization (WHO) “all the activities whose primary purpose is to promote, restore or maintain health”. When we move into the 21st century, the promotion and protection of human rights is gaining greater momentum. The WHO constitution 1946 stated “The enjoyment of the highest standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition”

Patients, families and healthcare professionals occasionally face complicated decisions about medical treatments. These decisions may clash with a patient and/or family morals, religious beliefs or healthcare plan. In this risky situation medical ethics is not only considerate review of how to act in the best interest of patients and their family but also about making good choices based on beliefs and values regarding life, health, and suffering. In the past, only a few individual physicians devoted themselves to medical ethics. Beginning in the second half of twentieth century, the field undergoes explosive expansion and experts from numerous disciplines entered in medical ethics. The swift advances in medical diagnosis and treatment and the introduction of new technologies have created numerous new ethical problems, resulting in the maturation of medical ethics as a specialty in its own right.
Enormous development has been achieved in the medical field during the last few decades and more is projected in the following decades. Advances in diagnostic imaging and biological testing techniques as well as in medical forecasting based on genetic testing are ongoing. Advances in surgical and medical cures, organ and tissue transplantation, artificial organs, cloning, tissue culture techniques, molecular biology and information technology are reported almost daily. “Modern Medical Ethics” is based on concept derived from various disciplines, including the biomedical sciences, the behavioral sciences, philosophy, religion and law. Modern medical ethics is essentially a form of applied ethics, which seeks to clarify ethical questions that characterize the practice of medicine and to justify and weigh the various practical options and considerations. Thus medical ethics is the application general ethical principles to ethical issues. The application of such an ethic is not specific to medicine but also relates to economy, law, journalism, and their like.
Medical ethics is now not only part of the curriculum in institutes of the health professions in developed countries but also research institutes of medical ethics have been established at all levels. In developed nations the medical literature has proliferated, with numerous books and journals devoted entirely to the subject. In such countries common citizen is also vitally interested in this subject, and public lectures, newspaper articles, legal discussions and legislation on medical ethical issues are frequent. Within Canada, EU, United States, and somehow gulf countries, Modern Medical Ethics has emerged as a new professional. The individuals normally have specialized in one or more the fields of philosophy, ethics, law, religion and medicine, and serve as advisor in hospitals to physicians, patients and their families. They also effort to resolve difficult ethical questions posed to them by the medical team or by patients and their families. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Organ Donation the Gift of Life

-
Image
Overview: “Human organ can either be donated as free (gift) or sold by the donor. The organ could be accepted/purchased directly by a patient/ his relatives or “through a third party”. Selling of human organ has enormous ethical, socio-cultural and religious implications and is prohibited in majority of countries of the world. It is banned in US and most of the European countries. The Islamic religious scholars also disapprove this practice of selling human organ. The organ donation is based on three Islamic principles i.e. beneficence, gift (donation) and usefulness and sustenance of human life”. Background: Organ transplantation is the established treatment for the failure of vital organ such as the kidney, pancreas, liver, heart or lung. Kidneys are by far the most common type of organ transplant. Future demand for organ transplants is likely to increase due to the rapid rise in some diseases, such as diabetes and hepatitis C, together with an ageing population. Organ transplantat...
Read more

Addressing A New Paradigm: Infectious Diseases And National Security

-
Image
“If it creates instability, chaos, conflict and war, that has national security implications.” – Samuel R. Berger Conventionally, national security has been defined as the safeguarding the state from physical threats. The last two or three decades have seen sharp rise in other non-traditional threats, such as drugs, and diseases. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, and their pandemic potential, pose a challenge to national security in the 21 st century that cannot be overlooked. The historical threat to national security by epidemic diseases is not new; however the threat has increased in recent past and is growing rapidly in developing countries like Pakistan. There are many lines of attack that infectious diseases can intimidate national security i.e. increased rates of morbidity and mortality, massive damage on public health and health infrastructure, political instability, and economic volatility. The world has changed noticeably ever since World Health Organiza...
Read more

GIS For National Security And Counterterrorism Strategy

-
Image
http://www.diplomacypakistan.com/articles/gis-for-national-security-and-counterterrorism-strategy/ At least for the last three decades, one of the most discussed topics in social sciences is terrorism and national security. However, social sciences lack a logical justification of why terrorism occurs? Why it escalates and de-escalates? Why certain types of victims are selected? And, what determines the choice of weapons? Despite some contributions by scholars from security and regional geopolitics, political science, law and international relations, the state of hypothesis, data and facts about causes of terrorism remains in hysteria. Justifiably, terrorism remains one of the security challenges of the modern world – together with organized crime, extremism, religious, ethnic and social conflicts. Identifying that terrorism is an artifact of an amalgamation of demographic, economic, and political determinants, a panel of National Research Council observes that “regions most li...
Read more