title: Ethical considerations in contemporary medicine.
abstract: Numerous benefits brought along by the impressive technological progress of the contemporary world are also accompanied by potential hazards of dehumanization of life. As neither medicine has been skipped over by the technological progress, there is a risk for the physician to become dependent on it rather than master it. Therefore, there is the risk of deprivation of medical ethics norms, ever more frequently transforming the patient's position of the subject of medical activities into the position of an object. This pending risk is especially present in surgery, a medical discipline characterized by the highest technological and technical differentiation. If the surgeon is to preserve high ethical standards in his work, he should strictly follow the basic medical ethics norm, that proclaim full respect of the patient's will, forbid doing harm to the patient, and point to equity and compassion on providing medical aid. These ethical norms should be respected not only on performing surgical procedures, but also on making indications for the procedure. The future development of medicine and surgery, with a substantial impact of new, technical and technological advances, will open new, presently unknown ethical issues. All this will require through sociophilosophical and humane-ethical considerations in order to preserve the basic medical ethics norms warranting humaneness and ethics of medicine.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stulhofer
mesh_terms: D004992:Ethics, Medical; D013502:General Surgery; D006801:Humans; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D028722:Virtues