Military Medical Ethics — Physician First, Last, Always

Abstract

The global war on terror has brought renewed attention to the question of whether physicians in the U.S. military are physicians first, soldiers first, or physician–soldiers, or whether some other formulation best describes their medical–ethical obligations. The chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, Edmund Pellegrino, has insisted that medical ethics are and must be the same for civilian and military physicians, “except in the most extreme contingencies.”¹ There is no special medical ethics for active-duty military physicians any more than there is for Veterans Affairs physicians, National Guard physicians, public health physicians, prison physicians, or managed care physicians. The only question is whether there are “extreme contingencies” that justify physicians' suspension of their medical–ethical obligations.