Theory and Practice in Medical Ethics

How and where do ethical theory and practice meet? By what method and on what basis are clinical, moral decisions made? How do theories, principles, rules, values, and facts fit together to produce a moral decision? This thorny territory is explored by Graber and Thomasma, both of whom have considerable experience in medical ethics. The authors tease out and articulate six models of moral reasoning apparently extant in the literature. The models vary from the purely deductive to the purely inductive. Each is illustrated by citations of papers whose authors (wittingly or not) use one or another of these methods. - Annals of Internal Medicine