Physicians, AIDS, and Occupational Risk: Historic Traditions and Ethical Obligations

Abstract

The authors review the ambiguous history of physicians and of codes of medical ethics regarding the care owed to patients with contagious epidemic diseases. They argue that a new professional ethic is needed to define the physician patient relationship, especially now when some physicians are reluctant to treat AIDS patients. Zuger and Miles reject as incomplete both ethics based on patients' rights to health care, which are primarily a claim on the profession, and ethics based on a contractual relationship, which permit the physician to refuse to enter the relationship. They propose to add an ethic of virtue which sustains the moral purpose of medicine and mandates that, in voluntarily committing themselves to the profession of healing, physicians are obligated to undertake the treatment of persons presenting themselves for care. (KIE abstract)