Abstract

This article begins with three problems of “dual loyalties” in medicine, the supposed fact that military physicians are, as medical officers, sometimes required to do what violates ordinary medical ethics—for example, ignore medical need in order to treat their own wounded before civilians or wounded enemy, help make chemical or biological weapons more deadly, or assist at a rough interrogation. These problems are analyzed as special cases of a problem that could arise in any profession, a problem easily resolved using a theory of professional ethics absent from medical ethics until now though common outside. Employing a physician—rather than an ordinary officer, some other kind of healer, or scientist—is to enter a sort of “Ulysses contract” requiring the physician’s professional standards to preempt obligations otherwise applying to an employee. In this way, the article also illustrates the benefits that might accrue to medical ethics from drawing on other fields of practical ethics.