This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Patient Safety/ Medical Error  • Medical Education  • Medical Ethics  • Patient-Physician Communication  • Alert me on articles by topic

Winston Chiong, MD, PhD

JAMA. 2007;298:1046-1048.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In the traditional view of the patient-physician relationship, physicians are obligated to act in the best medical interests of their individual patients and should not compromise their patients' care for the sake of third parties (persons outside this relationship). In truth, it is doubtful that physicians have ever fully upheld this uncompromising standard, and more recently some have advocated a balance between concern for the individual patient and concern for the greater good in contexts such as clinical research and cost containment.^1-3 But the traditional, exclusively patient-centered ethic continues to exert a powerful hold on physicians' self-conceptions and patients' expectations, perhaps in part because the medical profession so far has failed to articulate an alternative principle to guide how physicians should weigh the claims of patients and third parties.

Although potential conflicts between patient and public interests have been explored in the literature on clinical research . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Risks and Deception

Author Affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco.