Ethical Issues Regarding Mixed Agency of Military Physicians

Abstract

The author, who is a faculty member at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, likens the conflict that all physicians face between their obligations to individual patients and their obligations to society to the issues of divided loyalties faced by military physicians. He maintains that the value priorities developed in military medicine can be extrapolated to civilian settings. Howe develops these ethical paradigms from considerations of triage and treatment of soldiers, prisoners, and civilians; confidentiality in the physician patient relationship; and the physician's role in weapons-related research and in experimentation on a coerced population. (KIE abstract)