More On Weeding Out Medical Ethical Misfits

"Finding oneself in the hands of an unethical physician can be a terrifying experience. How can we know whether the physician to whom we entrust our bodies and our confidences seriously lacks medical ethics? Are government and medical community safeguards effective in weeding out unsafe doctors?" So writes Philip R. Alper,Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover Institution in the Hoover Digest titled "Why Medical Ethics Matter". It is worth reading as we continue the discussion of the topic of weeding out medical misfits. Alper contrasts the various approaches through the centuries to establish professional behavior from the threatening Code of Hammurabi to the motivating Oath of Hippocrates and to the perhaps legally scripted American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics and finally to the complex recently developed Charter of Medical Professionalism. The latter, according to Alper "created by three preeminent internal medicine organizations in the United States and Europe, ... speaks in near-religious terms of 'three fundamental principles and ten commitments' (the latter actually total 36 by my count when compound sentences are teased apart) that would challenge a genius to comprehend and a saint to perform." Do you think these literal guideposts to ethical behavior accomplish what they were intended? Can you suggest other approaches to this issue? ..Maurice.