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Gary N. Fox, MD
The Reading (Pa) Hospital and Medical Center

JAMA. 1989;261(8):1150.

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

To the Editor.—

Connelly and Dalle-Mura's¹ study of the ethical problems in the medical office deserves comment. The authors defined an ethical problem as "an ethical issue arising during the course of the office visit that comes into conflict with the physician's moral obligation to benefit the patient." By Boolean logic, since it is difficult to measure benefit during an encounter, almost every patient-physician contact becomes an ethical problem, as exemplified below.

Physicians earn livings from people who are ill or fear illness. It would be irrational to purchase our services if there were no perceived consequences of not receiving them. How and to what degree this fear is generated are ethical issues.

How accurately do we convey to patients their anticipated benefit from therapy? There are various ways to express epidemiologic data. For example, "Mortality was reduced by 20% as a result of treating hypertension, which corresponds to . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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