Situational ethics equals greed

Physicians are a privileged group entrusted with an unshrouded view ofour patients' minds and bodies and the relatively autonomous capabilityof prescribing various managements, medicines, and procedures. For example, patients often willingly accept our recommendation for choiceof competing treatments based on their confidence in our medical opinion.This profound trust is granted to us by society because of an educationgained in part by their generosity (as tax payers, benefactors, and trainingsubjects during our learning curve) and thus requires a high level of responsibilityto prescribe management choices that are intrinsically best for each individualpatient without regard to our own financial interest.