ABSTRACT
Medical and healthcare practice has many forms and can embrace many backgrounds and disciplines. This chapter focuses on the relatively easily defined science-based Western medicine. The Greek tradition of medical practice was epitomised by the Hippocratic School on the island of Kos around 400 BC and there the foundations of both modern medicine and the ethical facets of the practice of that medicine were laid. What is known as the Hippocratic Oath was developed at and for those times, yet it remains the basis of ethical medical behaviour today, even though some of the detail is obsolete. The principles of medical ethics have developed over several thousand years and continue to evolve and change, influenced by society, the legal profession and the medical profession itself. Most days in the media there will be a headline news story with its basis in the interpretation of aspects of medical ethics, such as euthanasia, the death penalty, torture and abortion.
