Military medical ethics (MME) is a specialized branch of

medical ethics Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. T ...

with implications for

military ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...

. Both are primarily fields of

applied ethics Applied ethics refers to the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in the areas of private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadersh ...

, the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to the specific contexts of medicine and military affairs, respectively. MME encompasses the practical application of ethics by military physicians and other healthcare practitioners to dilemmas in military clinical and public health settings in which the patients may be friendly or enemy personnel or in which civilians are affected by military operations.

Overview

Within a garrison (peacetime or non-deployed) setting, precepts of MME may not differ much from medical ethics in a civilian context and usually employ the same decision-making processes. (Military physicians in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, for example, are licensed by at least one of the state medical boards and so are required to practice medicine according to the ethical stipulations of that state.) There is an intrinsic dichotomy, however, between medicine’s healing mission and a military’s (sometimes) destructive operations. Because military operations may result in the injury or death of enemy personnel (often deliberately so) and may involve the detention and interrogation of captured enemy personnel, medical ethics considerations for clinical providers assigned or attached to a military unit in a deployment or combat situation cannot always be identical to those in the civilian world. Ethical conflicts may emerge in the tension between responsibilities to the patient and duties to the command structure. The degree to which principles of medical ethics may justifiably be informed by, or even altered to accommodate, issues of national security is controversial. Annas, George J. (2008)
“Military Medical Ethics — Physician First, Last, Always”
''

New England Journal of Medicine ''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one. Hist ...

'', Volume 359:1087-1090, Number 11 (September 11 issue). See als
Letters to the editor

Historical background

Discussions of MME often take as a point of departure the lessons to be learned from the perversion of medical practice by military physicians and others in the period leading up to and during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

in Germany and Japan. They may also entail the more recently revealed Cold War radiation experiments undertaken by the United States government. Such discussions often center upon questions of whether these widely deplored activities of the past can be reasonably compared to present-day MME dilemmas.

References

Citations

Other sources

*Beam, Thomas E. and Linette R. Sparacino, Editors (2003),
Military Medical Ethics, Vol. 1
' (Series: Textbooks of Military Medicine),

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: The

Borden Institute The Borden Institute is a U.S. Army “Center of Excellence in Military Medical Research and Education”. In 1987, U.S. Army Colonel Russ Zajtchuk conceived the idea for a “Center of Excellence in Military Medical Research and Education,” u ...

. *Beam, Thomas E. and Linette R. Sparacino, Editors (2003),
Military Medical Ethics, Vol. 2
' (Series: Textbook of Military Medicine), Washington, DC: The Borden Institute. * Grodin, Michael A. and George J. Annas (2005)
“Military Medical Ethics” [Review]
''

'', Volume 352:312-314, Number 3, (January 20 issue). *Elahi, Mansoor ,

* Eagan, Sheena M. “Medicine as a Non-Lethal Weapon: The Ethics of ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’. ” Ethics and Armed Forces. Issue 2015/1: pp 9-15. * Eagan, Sheena M. “The Warrior in a White Coat: Moral Dilemmas, the Physician-Soldier & the Problem of Dual Loyalty.” Medical Corps International Forum. Volume 4: pp 4-7. * Messelken, Daniel and Hans U. Baer, Editors (2013),
Proceedings of the 2nd ICMM Workshop on Military Medical Ethics
'. Bern. * Messelken, Daniel and Hans U. Baer, Editors (2014),
Proceedings of the 3rd ICMM Workshop on Military Medical Ethics
'. Bern. * Messelken, Daniel and David Winkler, Editors (2015).
Proceedings of the 4th ICMM Workshop on Military Medical Ethics
'. Bern. {{ISBN, 978-3-905782-98-1 Eagan, Sheena M. “Medicine as a Non-Lethal Weapon: The Ethics of ‘Winning Hearts and Minds’. ” Ethics and Armed Forces. Issue 2015/1: pp 9-15. Eagan, Sheena M. “The Warrior in a White Coat: Moral Dilemmas, the Physician-Soldier & the Problem of Dual Loyalty.” Medical Corps International Forum. Volume 4: pp 4-7. Applied ethics Bioethics Ethics of science and technology Medical ethics Military medicine