• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Bharat Savur

These days medicine, for many, is more a career than a calling. Too often, the lack of ethics has left this noble profession with its own share of scams and scandals.

Physician, behave thyself" could well be the medical moral if a move initiated by the Nashik-based Maharastra University of health Sciences is implemented, and with both the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the world Health Organisation adding weight to the university's proposal, it seems almost sure that to-be-doctors would soon bone up on ethics as well as anatomy and physiology before they take the Hippocrates oath.

At first appearance, morality in medicine might seem strange to a society that treats doctors as demi-gods. But that, precisely, could be the problem. As Dr Arshad Ghulam Moh, former president of the Indian Medical Association (Bombay-west) points out, "There was a time, till about 30 to 40 years ago, when medical teachers were looked upon as role models. They were the ones who inculcated medical ethics in students, but we don't have those kind of role models anymore."

The ever-growing gap between modern medical technology and traditional practice (both modern warfare and medical welfare have grown in geometrical proportions in the past 20 years) on the one hand, and the worldwide erosion of ethical standards in our devalued times has necessitated this marriage between morality and medicine.

Hence, the Nashik University's academic council, chaired by Vice Councillor Dr Dayanand Donggaokar, will determine the ethics curriculum and its integration with subjects already taught. "We will be looking at patient-related issues," says Dongaokar. "We will be telling students that they cannot utilise patients for personal gains. For instance, if there is a research project going on, the beneficiary must be the patient and not the drug manufacturing company."

Indeed with the multinational pharmaceutical companies finding India both a lucrative, largely populated market and an inexpensive country for clinical trials, several doctors fear that the patients are already being exploited.

This writer came across a situation, 15 years ago, when a neuro physician claimed that he and a leading drug house had found a cure for Parkinson's disease. A close relative afflicted with this irreversible disease grasped the news with shaky hands. Sad to say 15 years and much medical treatment later, his case remains just as bad. Hence, fortunately, the new subject will go beyond traditional doctor-patient roles.

"There are changes in medicine every second day," says Dr S.M.Saptnekar, director of Haffkine Institutes and administrator of the Maharastra Medical Council. "There is vitro-fertilisation, surrogate motherhood and gene therapy and your average general practitioner is not equipped with the ethical framework to deal with these issues. If medical students are taught ethics as a separate subject, they will be able to understand the intricacies of these topics and deal with them sensitively."

Sensitively, indeed an ethical code of conduct for medicos, may have seemed like carrying coals to New castle two generations ago. Alas, as elsewhere-almost everywhere-the physician's world too has changed. And not always for better either. All too often, this noble profession spawns its share of scams and scandals. Dr Jekylls, quite often, turns out to be `Mr Hyde'. And medicine, to quite a few, today is more a commercial career than a calling.

Hence, ethics in medical colleges is a course whose time has come. So, once the curriculum is ready, the Medical Council of India — the mother of India' medical education — will approve it. And the subject would be inducted in all medical courses across the country.

Dr Moh would like the subject to include social issues like female foeticide, selective abortion, doctor's relationships with the pharmaceutical industry and the physician's role in times of social conflict. In short, preventive moral medicine. Meanwhile, the very concept and its induction are both a symptom and sign of trying times. All that is for the future. Time will tell whether ethical education makes medicine more moral or not.

Meanwhile, even more than the old adage of `an apple a day', it is exercise-cardio-vascular efficiency — that, in most cases keeps doctors' visits rare.

The long journey to fitness often starts with a single step. A simple left step followed by a right takes you a great distance on the healthy highway. Finally. How about ethics in fitness instruction?

The writer is co-author of the book, Fitness For Life..

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Hi-tech bonding

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line