In 1975, writing about the immorality of a strike by resident physicians (housestaff) in New York City,1 I pointed out that "for a physician to strike, for whatever reason, is unconscionable and totally contrary to every standard. of medical ethics and morality." Although sympathetic to the demands of the housestaff, I argued that to leave patients without direct medical assistance and attendan...

A case of adult sibling incest serves as the occasion to review relevant literature and discuss issues related to competence to consent to sexual relations between adults. The case was presented at ethics rounds at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (Boston, MA), and the resulting discussion is analyzed as to the decision making with which the treatment team is faced. The relationships amon...

by Professor Finsen were A nyone trying to get clear about the presented at the Pacific Division morality of the use of animals in medical research immediately faces Meeting of the Society for the the following problem: it is immensely hard to get agreement on the value of Study of Ethics and Animals, the enterprise strictly for humans. HJ. McCloskey, for example, portrays the human stake in th...

Glenn McGee argues that the time is now for debating the morality of patenting human genes. In one sense he is surely right. While thousands of patents have been issued or are pending on many gene sequences, public policy with respect to ownership of the human genome is still far from settled. So a debate about the ethics of patenting genes is, if nothing else, timely. In another sense however,...

Unlike bioethicists who contend that there is a morality common to all, H. Tristan Engelhardt (1996) argues that, in a pluralistic secular society, any morality that does exist is loosely connected, lacks substantive moral content, is based on the principle of permission and, thus, is a morality between moral strangers. This, says Engelhardt, stands in contrast to a substance-full morality that...