Ethics Newsline®

NEW YORK
Two prominent medical ethicists last week called for reform of the nation’s professional medical associations, urging doctors to remember that their primary responsibility is to patients — not to profits.

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Edmund Pellegrino of the Georgetown University Medical Center and Dr. Arnold S. Relman of the Harvard Medical School insisted that professional medical associations should reject “economic, commercial, and political agendas.”

Pellegrino and Relman outlined six ethics guidelines for medical associations, including putting the interests of patients above economic concerns, rejecting unionization, strict guidelines as the source of money given to medical associations, less dependence on money from drug manufacturers, and some sort of representative democracy, the Reuters news agency reported.