The Just and Medical Ethics

Abstract

I would like to illustrate two things: first, that at an interpersonal level medical ethics is first what we can call a treatment pact, that in the end comes under norms that raise it to the level of a professional code of ethics; and second, that the relation between the two levels of medical ethics can be compared to the relation between the particular judgment made by a court of law and the legal norm on which the judgment is based. In this sense, we can say that a medical act that comes under the norm of the professional code of ethics is a just act.