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Doctors should be morally common: a reply to Rosamond Rhodes
  1. Charles Foster1,2
  1. 1 Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  2. 2 Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Charles Foster, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UL, UK; Charles.Foster{at}gtc.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

​Rosamond Rhodes contends, by reference to seven examples, that medical ethics is distinctly different from non-medical ethics. Each of those examples, on proper examination, illustrates precisely the opposite contention. It is clear not only that medical ethics relies on the same principles as non-medical (and indeed non-professional) ethics, but that it should so rely. A distinctively medical ethics would be dangerous: it would divorce ethical medical decision-making from the patients whom medicine exists to serve.

  • morality
  • ethics
  • doctors

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Footnotes

  • Contributors CF is the sole author of this article.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent for publication Not required.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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