Ethics in Medicine
Ethics plays a central role in modern medicine, shaping how scientific knowledge is applied, how decisions are made, and how responsibility is understood. This section explores ethical questions that arise alongside medical and biomedical advancement, with attention to patient autonomy, fairness, risk, and the societal impact of scientific progress.
The discussions presented here are analytical and educational, focused on reasoning through ethical dilemmas rather than offering definitive answers or clinical guidance.
Should Genetic Testing Be Done on Children?
Genetic testing is one of those things that sounds very advanced and almost futuristic, but it’s already very real. Today, it’s possible to test someone’s DNA and find out whether they might be at risk for certain diseases later in life. When it comes to adults, this already raises a lot of questions. But when it comes to children, the situation becomes even more complicated.
On one hand, genetic testing in children could be helpful. If a child is at risk for a serious condition, knowing early could allow doctors and families to prepare, monitor symptoms, or even prevent certain outcomes. In some cases, early intervention can genuinely improve quality of life. From this perspective, genetic testing feels like a tool meant to help and protect.
On the other hand, children cannot fully understand or consent to this kind of information. A genetic test doesn’t just give medical data. It can shape how a child is viewed by others and how they view themselves as they grow up. Knowing from a young age that you might develop a disease later in life could create anxiety, fear, or pressure that the child never chose to carry. There’s also the question of whether someone should have the right to decide, later in life, whether they want to know this information at all.
This is where the ethical tension comes in. Genetic testing in children often involves a balance between beneficence, meaning doing what’s good for the patient, and respect for autonomy, meaning respecting a person’s right to make their own decisions. Acting early might be beneficial, but it can also take away a future choice. There’s also the concern of nonmaleficence, or avoiding harm, especially psychological harm that isn’t immediately visible.
Another layer to this issue is how the information is used. Who has access to a child’s genetic data? How is it stored? Could it affect future opportunities, like insurance or employment? Even if the intentions are good, the long-term consequences of genetic testing aren’t always predictable.
Questions like this show that medicine isn’t just about science or technology. It’s about judgment, responsibility, and understanding the impact decisions can have over time. There isn’t a simple yes-or-no answer here, and that’s kind of the point. Ethical questions in medicine often exist because there are good reasons on both sides, and navigating them requires more than just medical knowledge.
Can Patients Refuse Life-Saving Treatment?
At first, this question sounds kind of extreme. Most people assume that if there’s a treatment that can save someone’s life, the obvious answer is to accept it. From the outside, refusing life-saving treatment can seem irrational or even irresponsible. But once you start thinking about it more deeply, the question becomes a lot more complicated.
Patients refuse life-saving treatment for many different reasons. Sometimes it’s because of religious beliefs. Sometimes it’s because the treatment would cause extreme pain or permanently reduce quality of life. Other times, it’s because the patient understands the risks and outcomes and decides that continuing treatment isn’t what they want. In those moments, medicine stops being about what can be done and starts being about what should be done.
This is where patient autonomy becomes really important. Autonomy means that a person has the right to make decisions about their own body, even if others disagree with those decisions. In medicine, respecting autonomy is considered a core ethical principle. A patient isn’t just a body to be treated. They’re a person with values, beliefs, and priorities that matter just as much as the medical facts.
At the same time, this creates tension for healthcare providers. Doctors are trained to save lives. Beneficence, the duty to help, is a huge part of medicine. Watching a patient refuse treatment that could keep them alive can be emotionally difficult, especially when the doctor truly believes the treatment could help. There’s also the principle of nonmaleficence, or avoiding harm, which can feel conflicted when refusing treatment leads to death.
Things become even more complex when patients are very young, very old, or unable to communicate clearly. Who gets to decide then? Family members? Doctors? Legal systems? These situations show that medical decisions are rarely just scientific. They involve judgment, responsibility, and sometimes uncertainty that doesn’t have a clear answer.
Questions like this highlight that medicine isn’t about forcing outcomes, even when technology allows it. It’s about balancing care with respect, and recognizing that preserving life doesn’t always mean the same thing to every person. Ethical questions like patient refusal remind us that medicine is as much about understanding people as it is about understanding disease.
Should We Test for Diseases We Can’t Treat?
With how advanced medicine has become, it’s easy to assume that more information is always better. Genetic testing can now identify risks for diseases long before symptoms appear, sometimes even before birth. But this raises a difficult question: should we test for diseases that we can’t actually treat?
On one hand, knowing can feel empowering. Genetic information can help people prepare mentally, financially, or emotionally for what might come later. It can allow families to plan ahead, seek support, or monitor symptoms earlier. For some people, having information, even if there’s no treatment, feels better than living with uncertainty.
On the other hand, knowing you might develop a disease that has no cure can be incredibly heavy. That kind of knowledge doesn’t just stay in a medical file; it follows someone through their life. It can affect how they see themselves, how others see them, and how they make decisions about their future. For some, the anxiety and fear that come with that knowledge may cause more harm than benefit, especially when there’s nothing that can be done medically to change the outcome.
This is where the ethical tension really shows. Testing for untreatable diseases often involves a balance between beneficence, doing what is helpful, and nonmaleficence, avoiding harm. While early knowledge might help with preparation, it can also introduce psychological harm that isn’t immediately visible. There’s also the question of autonomy. Should people have the right to choose not to know something that could shape the rest of their lives?
Things become even more complicated when testing involves children. A child can’t fully understand what genetic risk means or decide whether they want that information. Testing early may take away a choice they might have preferred to make later, when they’re able to understand the consequences themselves. In that case, testing isn’t just about health. It’s about whose decision it is to carry that knowledge.
Questions like this show that medical progress doesn’t always make decisions easier. Sometimes it creates new responsibilities and new uncertainties. Just because we can test for something doesn’t mean we always should. Ethical questions like these remind us that medicine isn’t only about discovering information, but about deciding how, when, and whether that information should be used.
​
More to come soon!