Abstract

This article, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Medical Ethics, approaches the question ‘what does it mean to do good medical ethics?’ first from a general perspective and then from the personal perspective of a Jewish Orthodox physician and ethicist who tries, both at a personal clinical level and in national and sometimes international discussions and debates, to reconcile his own religious ethical values—especially the enormous value given by Jewish ethics to the preservation of human life—with the prima facie ‘principlist’ moral norms of contemporary secular medical ethics, especially that of respect for patients’ autonomy.