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Why doctors and nurses must not kill patients.

Euthanasia continues to be a subject of lively interest to many groups in society. It is often discussed in terms which appeal to those who believe there is no other way to relieve the sufferings of the dying, but which fail to explore its important ethical, professional and legal aspects. When these are examined, it is seen that the legalization of euthanasia would create major problems in medicine and nursing, chiefly centred on the likelihood of abuse and the difficulty or impossibility of its detection. It is now known from official sources that in Holland, the only place where euthanasia is widely practised though in defiance of the law, the authorities have no control over it, and it is indeed associated with many abuses, including the frequent killing of persons without their consent.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

Codes of medical ethics and the exportation of less-than-standard care.

Recently a number of AIDS/AZT research studies, carried out by U.S. universities, have come under intense ethical scrutiny. In these studies, control groups of HIV-positive pregnant women were being given a placebo rather than AZT. Such research protocols would be illegal if practiced in the U.S. I examine a number of lamentable ethical lapses in the studies, and conclude that at least some of these ethical problems are traceable to a troubling contradiction between differing international codes of ethics. In a word, some international codes mandate that all research subjects (including control groups) receive the best standard of care available in the country sponsoring the research, while others suggest that providing only a "local" standard of care is ethically appropriate. I argue that these two ethical mandates cannot both be satisfied, and that host country populations will remain subject to exploitation unless this contradiction is resolved.

Codes of Ethics↗