Zürich, Switzerland

Biomedical Ethics and Law

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: medicine, health care
University website: www.uzh.ch
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The term ethics derives from Ancient Greek ἠθικός (ethikos), from ἦθος (ethos), meaning 'habit, custom'. The branch of philosophy axiology comprises the sub-branches of ethics and aesthetics, each concerned with values.
Law
Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior. Law is a system that regulates and ensures that individuals or a community adhere to the will of the state. State-enforced laws can be made by a collective legislature or by a single legislator, resulting in statutes, by the executive through decrees and regulations, or established by judges through precedent, normally in common law jurisdictions. Private individuals can create legally binding contracts, including arbitration agreements that may elect to accept alternative arbitration to the normal court process. The formation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and serves as a mediator of relations between people.
Ethics
I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to the impairment of ethical values. I am not thinking so much of the dangers with which technical progress has directly confronted mankind, as of the stifling of mutual human considerations by a "matter-of-fact" habit of thought which has come to lie like a killing frost upon human relations. … The frightful dilemma of the political world situation has much to do with this sin of omission on the part of our civilization. Without "ethical culture," there is no salvation for humanity.
Albert Einstein, in "The Need for Ethical Culture" celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Ethical Culture Society (5 January 1951)
Ethics
Strong ethics keep corporations healthy. Poor ethics make companies sick. Values are the immune system of every organisation.
Patrick Dixon, in Building a Better Business (2005), p. 131
Law
Before I be convict by course of law,
To threaten me with death is most unlawful.
William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 4, line 192.
An EU team has devised a cheaper industrial wastewater treatment process using just electricity. Prototype testing demonstrated effective removal of suspended particles and oxidisation of dissolved chemicals.
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