The Big Four
The principle that a patient has the right to make their own healthcare decisions without coercion.
What is Autonomy?
This 1973 Supreme Court case protected a woman's right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.
What is Roe v. Wade?
To participate in a study, subjects must sign this document to show they understand the risks and benefits.
What is an Informed Consent Document?
This "Order" tells medical staff not to perform CPR if a patient’s heart stops.
What is a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)?
This gene-editing tool allows scientists to "cut and paste" DNA, raising concerns about "designer babies."
What is CRISPR?
This principle, often translated as "Do no harm," requires providers to avoid causing unnecessary pain.
What is Non-Maleficence?
This infamous 40-year study in Alabama tracked untreated syphilis in Black men without their consent.
What is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?
This term refers to a "fake" treatment (like a sugar pill) given to a control group to see if a new drug actually works.
What is a Placebo?
The ethical term for "mercy killing" or the act of painlessly ending a life to relieve suffering.
What is Medical/Assisted Euthanasia?
The ethical concern that AI algorithms might prioritize certain patients over others based on flawed data.
What is Algorithmic Bias?
The principle of acting in the patient's best interest to provide a net benefit.
What is Beneficence?
These trials, held after WWII, led to the first international code of ethics for human experimentation.
What are the Nuremberg Trials?
These committees (IRBs) must approve any research involving human subjects before it begins.
What are Institutional Review Boards?
This legal duty (Tarasoff) requires therapists to break confidentiality if a patient threatens a specific person.
What is the Duty to Warn?
The controversial practice of using genetic testing to select embryos for both specific non-medical and medical traits like IQ or risk of developing cancer.
What is Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)?
This principle focuses on the fair and equitable distribution of healthcare resources and risks.
What is Justice?
In 1996, this sheep became the first mammal ever cloned from an adult cell, sparking a global debate over the ethics of "playing God" and the potential for human cloning.
Who is Dolly?
This specific group of people (such as children, prisoners, or those with cognitive impairments) requires extra protection in research.
What are Vulnerable Populations?
The ethical conflict where a doctor must decide whether to tell a patient a terminal diagnosis if the family believes the news will cause the patient to give up.
What is Therapeutic Privilege?
This 1997 film starring Ethan Hawke depicted a future where "valid" humans are engineered and "invalids" are discriminated against.
What is Gattaca?
The "Five-Dollar Word" for the duty of a doctor to be truthful and honest with their patients.
What is Veracity?
This 1979 report established the three core principles of modern research ethics: Respect, Beneficence, and Justice.
What is the Belmont Report?
In 1951, this woman's cancer cells were taken without her knowledge; those "HeLa" cells are still used in labs today.
Who is Henrietta Lacks?
This ethical "rule" justifies providing a treatment that has both a good and a bad effect (like high-dose morphine that relieves pain but may also shorten life), provided the bad effect is not the intended one.
What is the Doctrine of Double Effect?
This term describes a hypothetical future where the gap between the "genetically wealthy" and the "genetically poor" creates a new form of social class or "biological" inequality.
What is Genism (or Genetic Stratification)?