A VIRTUE-BASED MODEL FOR MEDICAL ETHICS AND PRACTICE IN EDMUND PELLEGRINO

This paper deals with the resurgence of interest in virtue ethics in professional ethics, specifically as it applies to Edmund Daniel Pellegrino's account in medical ethics. Pellegrino investigates in a clear manner the ethical problems of contemporary medicine from a virtue ethics point of view and offers a virtue-based ethic for medicine as an effective tool and a practical guide for confronting the challenges of modern medicine. His account builds on a thesis of the indispensability of virtuous character traits for a sound medical practice. Pellegrino's virtue ethics offers a plausible and distinctive alternative to utilitarian and Kantian (principle-based) approaches to understanding and evaluating professional roles. It is hoped that our exploration of Pellegrino's account will underline the place of a virtue ethics in medicine and stimulate a similar inquiry into social welfare, and into other forms of human professions and disciplines.