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Cognitive Moral Development Theory And Moral Decisions in Health Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2021

David F. Allen  and
Marsha D. Fowler
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Extract

During the past few years, health care professions haw received strong criticism for seemingly ethically wrong or inhumane practices. The Tuskegee syphilis study, experimentation on mentally retarded persons at Willow-brook, forced sterilizations of retarded individuals, and alleged malpractice and Medicaid abuses are a few examples of those instances that have received publicity. Incidents such as these, coupled with the development of an aggressive consumerism and with escalating scientific technological advances, haw created an urgent and widespread concern about medical ethics or bioethics. The Hastings Institute, two presidentially appointed commissions on issues in medical ethics, and the introduction of ethics courses in the curricula of medical and nursing schools are responses to ethical concerns in health care.

Although numerous texts and articles on specific bioethical issues haw been published in recent years, troubling questions remain about the normative ethics that form the foundation of responses to these issues.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , February 1982 , pp. 19 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1982

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