Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
As a member of the American College of Clinical Engineering, I subscribe to the established Code
of Ethics in that I will:
Accurately represent my level of responsibility, authority, experience, knowledge, and
education.
Strive to prevent a person from being placed at risk due to the use of technology.
Reveal conflicts of interest that may affect information provided or received.
Respect the confidentiality of information.
Work toward improving the delivery of health care.
Work toward the containment of costs by the better management and utilization of technology.
Promote the profession of clinical engineering.
Although these codes can be useful in promoting ethical conduct, such rules obviously
cannot provide ethical guidance in every situation. A profession that aims to maximize
the ethical conduct of its members must not limit the ethical consciousness of its members
to knowledge of their professional code alone. It must also provide them with resources
that will enable them to determine what the code requires in a particular concrete situation
and thereby enable them to arrive at ethically sound judgments in situations in which the
directives of the code are ambiguous or simply do not apply.
2.2 TWO
MORAL NORMS: BENEFICENCE AND NONMAL
EFICENCE
Two moral norms have remained relatively constant across the various moral codes and
oaths that have been formulated for health care providers since the beginnings of Western
medicine in classical Greek civilization. They are
which is the provision of
beneficence,
benefits, and
which is the avoidance of doing harm. These norms are traced
back to a body of writings from classical antiquity known as the
nonmaleficence,
Hippocratic Corpus.
Although these writings are associated with the name of Hippocrates, the acknowledged
founder of Western medicine, medical historians remain uncertain whether any of them,
including the
Corpus
are believed to have been authored during the sixth century BC, other portions are believed
to have been written as late as the beginning of the Christian era. Medical historians agree
that many of the specific moral directives of the
Hippocratic Oath,
were actually his work. Although portions of the
represent neither the actual prac-
tices nor the moral ideals of the majority of physicians of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Nonetheless, the general injunction
Corpus
“As to disease, make a habit of two things: (1) to help or,
(2) at least, to do no harm”
was accepted as a fundamental medical ethical norm by at least
some ancient physicians. With the decline of Hellenistic civilization and the rise of Chris-
tianity, beneficence and nonmaleficence became increasingly accepted as the fundamental
principles of morally sound medical practice. Although beneficence and nonmaleficence
were regarded merely as concomitant to the craft of medicine in classical Greece and Rome,
the emphasis upon compassion and the brotherhood of humankind, central to Christianity,
increasingly made these norms the only acceptable motives for medical practice. Even
today, the provision of benefits and the avoidance of doing harm are stressed just as much
in virtually all contemporary Western codes of conduct for health professionals as they
were in the oaths and codes that guided the health-care providers of past centuries.
