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BANGLADESH JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCE Volume-8 No. 1-2; January-March 2009 

Editorial 
 

Medical services without medical ethics:  
Sailing the ship without compass 

Brig. Gen. (Rtd) Prof. M Nuruzzaman1, Dr. Abu Kholdun Al-Mahmood2
 

Our lives, both present and future, are 
shaped by the ever-growing knowledge 
and power of the life sciences and of 
healthcare. Medicine is the universal 
science intended everywhere to sustain 
or better human health but ethical 
inquiry is an immense need to us when 
we are not sure about the direction 
where we are heading. It is to be noted 
that on his presidential speech to the 
American College of Surgeons in Oct 
2001 Prof R Scott Jones said, “to 
function effectively in the health care 
system…….to navigate in a trillion 
dollar industry, we need compass: 
medical ethics”1. 

Unfortunately in our country we are 
navigating our ship without this compass 
in the ever expanding ocean of medical 
industry. That’s why every time we are 
facing a situation where there is a gap 
between the caregivers and expectations 
of the clients. Very often we found news 

on patient’s dissatisfaction towards our 
caregivers in newspapers. Medical 
education curriculum without any 
component of morality is producing 
caregivers without conscience like 
robots. In this situation our patients are 
not banking on us and our healthcare 
market is being taken out by foreign 
hospitals and healthcare personnel of all 
categories. It is not only affecting our 
healthcare industry but also jeopardizing 
quality of medical education. The overall 
scenario is not a happy experience for 
us.  
 
To bring a major change in this bleak 
reality we have to incorporate moral and 
ethical input in every level of our 
undergraduate and post-graduate 
medical education curriculum. Moreover 
we have to prepare proper legislation 
and strictly impose them to guide our 
physicians.

_____________________________________________________________________________ 
Reference 
 
1. Dent MD. Licensed to Heal.  Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, 2002; 87 (8): 8-

12. 
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 
 

1.     Principal, Ibn Sina Medical College 
2. Prof. & Head of the department of Biochemistry, Ibn Sina Medical College 

Corresponds to:  
Brig. Gen. (Rtd) Prof. M Nuruzzaman, MCPS, MS, FICS 
Principal Ibn Sina Medical College, 
1/1B Kalyanpur, Mirpur Road, Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh 
 
 
 

“Every illness has a cure, and when the proper cure is applied to the disease,  
it ends it, Allāh willing.” [Sahih Muslim] 

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