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Medical ethics are nonetheless fairly effective at what they set out to do - because you'll get kicked out of the profession if you do anything too grossly unet

• webnrrd2k 12y ago
  I think ethical education is important, and is more of a first step rather than a complete solution. It's probably effective with most well-meaning professionals. But there are obvious conflicts... It's a problem when my health care conflicts with a doctor's profit motive. As an example, pharmaceutical sales is built around getting doctors to do borderline unethical behaviors like over-prescribing or prescribing ineffective medications. Not directly on-topic, I read this about an hour ago... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Swango http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Swango, an article about a doctor who was a mass murderer, and was eventually caught after killing something in the range of 30--60 people, and provides an interesting counter-point to the effectiveness of medical ethics. I admit that it's an edge case, the exception rather than the rule, but even ethics training and oversight isn't effective against a bad actor.