The evolution of medical ethics

The world of medical ethics is changing as fast as the rest of the world is. This week, Facebook’s unannounced psychological study has been all over the news, revealing that the social media giant manipulated posts on the Facebook walls of unwitting users for a week to see how it impacted their behaviour. Jess Zimmerman in The Guardian has had a particularly visceral reaction to it, highlighting the ethical problems in this fascinating, futuristic study. Earlier in June, Cardiologytoday also had something to say on the matter of Medicine and media, bringing up the particularly interesting issue of what a good practitioner would do in response to a Facebook request from a patient. When you become a doctor, the heady world of ethics becomes a personal responsibility, and so you will need to have a voice in these debates.