Future doctors flunk military medical ethics test

[Robbien]

Source: American Medical Association

Medical students get a failing grade on their knowledge of physicians' ethical obligations during wartime, according to a new study authored by a team of Harvard Medical School physicians.

The authors said their study, published in October in the International Journal of Health Services, should prompt medical schools to educate future doctors more thoroughly on the ethical questions they could face in an age of terror and torture.

But experts said that although medical curricula could cover military medical ethics, such instruction should be folded into discussions about the broader problem of dual loyalty -- when doctors' advocacy for the patient conflicts with other institutional or societal objectives.

Medical students should be taught how they can -- and should -- stand up to health plans, drugmakers, the government or any other entity that asks physicians to violate medical ethics.

Read more: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/12/17/prsb1217.htm

[Tyler Durden]

1. Today's Medical Ethics as taught at Harvard:

SHOW ME THE MONEY.

[msongs]

2. the military has ETHICS????? nt

[mainegreen]

6. Actually yes. It's politicians who don't have ethics.

[sailor65]

8. Yes

I've seen Military doctors perform just as heroically saving the lives of enemies as their own men. History is full of Medics carrying enemy soldiers to care even under fire from that same enemy. Military doctors do not command the same outragegeous pay that civilian doctors do, yet perform under the worst of conditions.

[flamin lib]

3. K&R

[pleah]

4. First do no harm.

Piss on that! It's all about the money, even for doctors these days.

[Tempest]

5. A new generation of Nazi doctors

Just after Germany banned Jews from practicing medicine, many German doctors joined the Nazi party for the perks and money.

They then willfully participated in the Nazi programs of euthanasia of the mentally ill and eugenics programs. They then graduated to human experimentation and finally the gassing of millions of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, socialists, communists and liberals.

[boricua79]

7. how hard is this really!

"above all else, do no harm" or "do onto others as you would want them to do unto you".

Why do we even have to teach Medical Ethics. Just spend a freaking day teaching them the above mottos and instruct them to always balance their actions against these mottos. If what they're about to do feels like something they wouldn't want done unto to them, or that it will do harm, they should refuse.

End of story. Ethics issue resolved.

Are we so morally bankrupt these days that we can't make a common sense decision about whether or not our actions are right or wrong. What the hell is wrong with these students? What the hell is wrong with our value system!

[kickysnana]

9. Bit of history...

Fundies in the 1980's sued, petitioned, fought and joined the school board because schools should not be teaching "morality and ethics". That was strictly something that parents should do.

Fundies in the late 1990's railed against public schools for not teaching, "morality and ethics" and started home schooling their kids where they were taught that homosexuals should be killed by pro-lifers for the good of America.

Logic also was fazed out replaced by memorizing rivers in China. Zero tolerance led the schools to not let kids make any decisions lest they ruin their lives.

So American youth had no ethics training, no logic and no decision making skills. But their parents could could use their ATMS and buy them Xbox, ipods and Fox-News 24 hours on cable.

No surprise here they cannot pass an ethics test.

BTW Medical schools were politicized in the late 1980's. Nagarian, heart transplant pioneer was forced out and a more Conservative U of MN medical school emerged that toed the government line. They now house a huge bio-terrorism research facility headed by Dr Osterholm who thinks Antibiotics and other life saving meds should be withheld from states that fail to follow CDC/NIH to the letter.
He wrote a book to that effect. Obviously he never read the Geneva Convention.