Unethical Science — Examples from the Past
These Trials give me goosebumps
One of the first seminar series I had to attend as a medical student was titled “Ethical thinking for physicians”. Now, after having studied for about six years and having listened to what feels like a million different lectures, I still consider these first seminars very valuable.
As very young medical students, it forced us to think about questions that physicians are faced with every single day.
Should you perform cardiopulmonary reanimation on a terminally ill patient? Are you allowed to perform an abortion on a mother who doesn’t want to become a parent? The list of ethical questions is endlessly long, never losing its current importance.
We’ve heard in on the news, now that the world is facing the coronavirus-pandemic: Should physicians be forced to triage patients and decide who should be ventilated, once beds on intensive care units become rare? Who should be the first in line to get a vaccine?
I’m very thankful that nowadays, at a very early stage of our studies, we are confronted with questions like this and have to form our own opinions. Even if we don’t have to make any decisions by ourselves just yet, it sensitizes us to what is going to come.
