Medicine and the Pressure of the Marketplace: Ethical Issues Involved in Medical Research and Practice

摘要

One of the most socially compelling justifications for the practice of medicine and the advancement of medical research is the possible benefits they bring to society. People desire health, well-being, and strength, and among the several professions and industries that address these, perhaps medicine carries the heaviest burden to help society reach these goals. Medicine is never just a private or individual affair, for it involves the good of society, and in that medicine promotes this good; it fulfills one of the greatest of virtues — beneficence, the actual doing of good to others. It is one thing to wish well of others (i.e., benevolence), but it is a greater challenge and reward to do good to others. Society esteems and appreciates the work of medicine for many reasons, but perhaps the reason medicine is so esteemed is that it exemplifies the intuitively appealing and socially necessary virtue of beneficence.