Research Ethics

Abstract

Historically medical ethics may be traced to guidelines for the physians such as the Hippocrates oath. In the early modern era to the Muslim physian such as Ishaq bin Al Rahawj who is the author of Conduct of a Physian  which is the first book dedicated to medical ethics.  Jewish thinkers such as Maimonides Roman Catholic scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aqquinas all have contributed towards medical ethics. These intellectual traditions continue in Catholic, Islamic and Jewish medial ethics. Later in 18th and 19th century medical ethics emerges as more self conscious discourse. A British doctor Thomas Percival wrote about medical jurisprudence and also coined the phrase medical ethics. [1,2] In 1847 the American Medical Association  developed the first code of ethics which was largely based on the work of the Percival [2]. The secular field borrowed largely from the Catholic medical ethics . It was in the 20th century that a much more liberal approach was taken by the liberal protestants. By 1960 and 1970 much of medical ethics went through  dramatic shift and reconfigured itself into bioethics