Medical Ethics and Epistemology
Sukhit Phaosavasdi MD*, Christoph Themessl PhD*, Hannes Mueller PhD*, Pongruk Sribanditmonkol MD, PhD*, Hans Kraml PhD*
Affiliation : * Member of International Academy of Science, Innsbruck University, Austria
Ethics in general may be supposed to deal with the idea of just and respectful coordination of actions.
Reciprocity, balance or a kind of symmetry and fairness seem to be of importance. This is in some respect the
special task for ethics in distinction from religious and more general cultural aspects in the formation of
human actions.
In this sense professional ethics generally has to do with an equilibrium between what is demanded
of the professionist and the reward he has a right to.
This might be applied to medical professionists directly.
Although doctors should be directed towards their patients, prepared to understand their problems,
it must be clear that a doctor is not a god at all. She or he cannot perform miracles, and cannot live on air and
good will. Charity is necessary, but not enough. A doctor has to take care of herself or himself and her or his
family as everybody else.
Medical ethics has to do with both of this, and this leads to kind of symmetric behavior. Patiens are
ethically constrained to respect the doctor as a human person as it is the obligatory in the reverse case, too.
In practice, cultural or even religious, for instance buddhistic principles suggest to evaluate situa-
tions and behaviour according to the following five principles:
Truth – Benefit – Right manner – Right time – Right person(1,3),
With this formal approach the ethical principles have to be applied(1,3). These principles, again in the example of a buddhistic culture, are:
Rights (the have to be respected and protected.)
Justice
Truthfullness
Honesty
Effective action
Avoidance of doing bad
At a closer look these formal and ethical principles are, even if they are taken from a special cultural background, of a transcultural character.
The ethical principles have to be applied and selected according to the formal principles that are general criteria for right actions.
Keywords : Ethic, Epistemology
