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Ralph A. Capone, MD
Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh (Pa)

JAMA. 1993;269(8):988-989.

	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.

—The recent article¹ and the accompanying Editorial² in JAMA are more about the interaction between the two major principles of deontological ethics (autonomy and beneficence) than about truth telling. Taken together they form an excellent primer on the proper interpretation and function of autonomy and beneficence in the clinical setting. Some clinicians and ethicists dwell too long on the potential conflict between patients' autonomy and physicians' obligations to promote patients' best interests. This may be a reaction to past abuses in clinical decision making, grounded in parentalism (paternalism), in which patients' values were rarely accounted for or completely ignored.

Physicians must serve their patients, but they are not servants of their patients. Most patients do not want their physicians to be mere "technological waiters," proffering menus of high-tech items from which they choose their own treatments. Clinical medicine involves two parties with differing perspectives, values, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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