“Thieves of Virtue: When Bioethics Stole Medicine”

摘要

Thieves of Virtue: When Bioethics Stole Medicine argues that modern bioethics, in trying to deal with modern medical technology, unnecessarily abandoned the physician/patient focus of the Hippocratic Oath in favor of a hodgepodge of dicey ethical heuristics that, in an effort to replace paternalism with individual liberty, has ended up favoring economic efficiency and the greater good over patient welfare. In clinical research, for example, the primacy of the physician’s responsibility to the patient has been diluted by ethical review boards who never meet the patient, much less understand his or her dreams and fears, and the “right” we give study participants to consent to experiments for which “informed consent” is essentially impossible.