Chapter 7: Doctors, Duties, and Dangers: The Reasonable Physician and Contagious Populations

Abstract

In an essay titled, “In Harm's Way. AMA Physicians and the Duty to Treat” (Clark, 2005), I argued that a physician's duty to treat, at personal risk, followed not only from the language, history, and precedents of the American Medical Association's Code of Ethics, but that such a duty was sound in morally relevant ways. A key element in the soundness of the argument was that such a duty had contractual features that were inherent in an implicit social covenant.

Citation

Clark, C.C. (2006), "Chapter 7: Doctors, Duties, and Dangers: The Reasonable Physician and Contagious Populations", Balint, J., Philpott, S., Baker, R. and Strosberg, M. (Ed.) Ethics and Epidemics (Advances in Bioethics, Vol. 9), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 163-174. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3709(06)09007-8