title: Patients' ethical obligation for their health.
abstract: In contemporary medical ethics health is rarely acknowledged to be an ethical obligation. This oversight is due to the preoccupation of most bioethicists with a rationalist, contract model for ethics in which moral obligation is limited to truth-telling and promise-keeping. Such an ethics is poorly suited to medicine because it fails to appreciate that medicine's basis as a moral enterprise is oriented towards health values. A naturalistic model for medical ethics is proposed which builds upon biological and medical values. This perspective clarifies ethical obligations to ourselves and to others for life and health. It provides a normative framework for the doctor-patient relationship within which to formulate medical advice and by which to evaluate patient choice.
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D028681:Moral Obligations; D010358:Patient Participation; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D012941:Social Responsibility; D012945:Social Values