Foreword

Medical ethics is not a subject that exists separately from the rest of medicine. It is woven through every clinical encounter: every conversation in which you must decide how much to tell a patient, every moment when you witness conduct that troubles you, every prescription you write, every patient you care for at the end of life. Medical ethics is the practice of medicine, seen from the inside.

This book is written for junior doctors in training across the Kingdom — undergraduate medical students in their clinical years, interns, and residents in postgraduate programs. Every chapter moves from foundational principles to their application in clinical scenarios drawn from real daily practice. It is designed to be read alongside your clinical work: before a rotation, before a difficult conversation, or whenever a case raises a question you want to think through carefully.

Several features of this book reflect the context in which you train and will practise medicine in Saudi Arabia:

• Islamic ethics is not treated as a separate appendix but integrated throughout every chapter. The principles of the Quran, the Sunnah, and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) are not supplementary to good medical ethics — they are one of its richest foundations. Where Islamic scholarly consensus is relevant to a clinical decision, it is presented clearly and with its jurisprudential basis.

• Saudi regulatory frameworks are given prominence. The SCFHS Code of Ethics, the Law of Practicing Healthcare Professions, the Saudi Guidelines for Informed Consent, the MOH Patient Bill of Rights, and your institution's training and conduct regulations, are not abstract bureaucratic documents. They are the specific framework within which you will practice, and you are expected to know them.

• The Saudi and Islamic clinical context takes utmost priority. The challenges of disclosure in a family-centered culture, the role of Islamic religious authority in end-of-life decisions, the specific patterns of pharmaceutical industry interaction in this region — these are addressed as they actually arise, not as Western problems translated into an Arabic setting.

Each chapter opens with a short story from the history of medicine, then follows a consistent structure: numbered section content, key terms, case vignettes for discussion, and a list of references. The case vignettes are designed for small-group discussion and seminar work — there are no simple answers, and you are encouraged to engage with the complexity they present rather than seeking abstract solutions.

This book brings together the principles of medical ethics and Islamic medical jurisprudence in a single, practical guide for trainees. It is intended as a standalone resource: the Islamic background is integrated throughout, so the book can be read on its own without a separate jurisprudence course. All sources consulted are acknowledged in the further-reading list at the end of each chapter; readers who wish to deepen their understanding are encouraged to consult them.

I am deeply grateful to my colleagues who generously gave their time to review, revise, and enrich the chapters of this book: Prof. Abdullah Alsabaani, Prof. Ibrahim Alnaami, Prof. Ali Aseeri, Prof. Mohmmed Alzahrani, Dr. Mohammed Alshehri, Dr. Ibrahim Tawhari, Dr. Hayfa Alhefdi, Dr. Asma Alhabbash, and Dr. Abdulaziz Abudasser. Their expertise, critical insight, and commitment to the education of our trainees have made this book considerably better than it would otherwise have been

Medicine is a privilege. The patients who allow you to examine them, to learn from their illnesses, and eventually to care for them extend a trust that your training has not yet fully earned. Ethics is how you honor that trust — not once, at graduation, but continuously, through every decision of your professional life.

Husain Y. Alkhaldy, MD

Abha, 1448 H / 2026 G

How to Use This book

This book is written for two overlapping audiences: undergraduate medical students in their clinical years, and postgraduate trainees — interns and residents. The core chapters apply to both. Where an issue looks different once you are working as a junior doctor — obtaining consent, escalating to a senior, disclosing an error, or carrying out a procedure under supervision — you will find a short box headed For Postgraduate Trainees. Undergraduate readers may read these as a preview of what lies ahead.

This book is organized into five thematic parts corresponding to the major domains of medical ethics you will encounter in clinical practice:

Part One — Foundations

Chapters 1–4 introduce the history of medical ethics, the major ethical theories, the four principles of biomedical ethics, and the concept of medical professionalism — across the arc of training, from medical student to intern to resident.

Part Two — The Doctor–Patient Relationship

Chapters 5–8 examine patient rights, autonomy and informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, and the ethics of truth-telling and communication. These chapters are directly relevant to your daily clinical encounters from your first clinical rotations onward.

Part Three — Special Clinical Topics

Chapters 9–13 cover the ethics of women's and reproductive health, surgery, end-of-life care, organ donation, and patients with special needs. These chapters address the most ethically complex clinical scenarios you will encounter.

Part Four — Research and Publication

Chapters 14–16 address research ethics, scientific publication ethics, and the ethics of artificial intelligence in medicine and academia. These chapters are increasingly relevant as you begin to engage with research and evidence-based practice.

Part Five — Public Health and Systems Ethics

Chapters 17–19 cover public health and preventive medicine ethics, Saudi healthcare law and regulations, and the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry and private sector.

Chapter Structure

Every chapter contains the following elements:

1. Opening Story — a short, true episode from the history of medicine that introduces the chapter’s central ethical question.

2. Numbered Sections — organized, detailed coverage of the chapter's topic with integration of Islamic ethics throughout.

3. Key Terms — a summary table of the essential vocabulary of the chapter, including relevant Arabic terms.

4. Case Vignettes for Discussion — three or four clinical cases per chapter, designed for small-group discussion. There are no single correct answers. You are expected to reason through the ethical issues, identify the principles at stake, and defend a position.

5. References — the works cited in the chapter, listed in full for readers who wish to explore the topics in greater depth.

Guidance for Case Discussions

Much of medical-ethics teaching and assessment is built upon ethical scenarios — case vignettes that present ethical questions. It is therefore important to train yourself to think through the principles of medical ethics in practice (applied medical ethics!). When approaching a case vignette, a useful framework is to ask the following four questions in order (drawn from the Jonsen, Siegler, and Winslade four-topic framework):

1. Medical Indications: What are the clinical facts? What are the goals of treatment? What does beneficence require?

2. Patient Preferences: What does the patient want? Is the patient competent? What does autonomy require?

3. Quality of Life: What is the patient's experience of their illness and treatment? What does beneficence as satisfaction require?

4. Contextual Features: What family, institutional, legal, cultural, or financial factors bear on this decision? What does justice require?

Table 1.1 — The Four-Topic Method (Jonsen, Siegler & Winslade)

Then ask: What does the Islamic framework add or require? Are there specific Quranic verses, Prophetic traditions, or scholarly rulings (fatwa) that are directly relevant? Does the Islamic position converge with or diverge from the secular bioethical analysis?

Where the two frameworks diverge, this book is explicit about how the divergence is resolved. In the Saudi context, the Kingdom's law and the rulings of the Council of Senior Scholars function as binding boundary constraints, and the four principles operate as reasoning tools within those boundaries. The aim of case discussion is therefore to reason critically and rigorously up to that legal-jurisprudential boundary — not to treat every principle as freely overridable, nor to foreclose discussion before it begins. This book is written for all physicians practising in the Kingdom, whatever their own faith: the professional obligation is to understand and respect the Islamic and legal framework that governs Saudi practice, not to adopt any particular set of personal beliefs. This also explains an asymmetry students often notice: a competent patient's refusal of treatment is virtually always respected, whereas a request for an intervention that crosses a clear legal or jurisprudential line may be declined. Autonomy licenses patients to refuse what is offered; it does not oblige a physician to provide what lies outside the bounds of lawful, ethical practice.

Chapter 1: What Is Medical Ethics?

In 1962, a hospital in Seattle had just learned to keep people with failing kidneys alive indefinitely on a new dialysis machine — but there were far more patients than machines. Unable to treat everyone, the hospital handed the choice to an anonymous committee of ordinary citizens — a lawyer, a minister, a homemaker, a banker — who decided which patients would be dialysed and live, and which would be turned away to die. When a magazine exposed their work under the title “They Decide Who Lives, Who Dies,” the public was stunned. The doctors had the power to save lives; what they lacked was an agreed way to decide whom to save. That gap — between what medicine can do and what it ought to do — is the subject of this book.

1.1 Why Study Medical Ethics?

Every day, doctors make decisions that profoundly affect the lives of their patients. Some of these decisions are straightforward — which antibiotic to prescribe, when to order an investigation. But many are not. Should you tell a patient the full truth about a terminal diagnosis if the family has begged you not to? Is it ethical to withdraw life support from a patient who left no written instructions? Who should receive the last available ICU bed when two equally ill patients arrive at the same time?

These are not gaps in medical knowledge. They are ethical dilemmas — situations in which two or more legitimate values conflict, and where there is no simple algorithmic answer. The ability to recognize, analyze, and navigate such dilemmas is not a soft skill at the margins of medicine. It is a core clinical competency, as essential as reading an ECG or managing sepsis.

Medical ethics is the branch of applied ethics that deals with questions arising from the practice of medicine and the delivery of healthcare. It asks: What should be done? What is right? What do we owe our patients, our colleagues, and society? This book will not give you a formula that produces the correct answer to every ethical question. What it will give you is a structured way of thinking — a set of principles, frameworks, and habits of moral reasoning that allow you to approach hard cases with clarity, consistency, and compassion.

1.2 The Historical Roots of Medical Ethics

Medicine’s ethical tradition stretches back four millennia — from the Code of Hammurabi and the Hippocratic Oath, through the great physicians of the Islamic Golden Age, to the modern international codes forged in response to the abuses of the twentieth century. Because this history is foundational to everything that follows, it is treated in full in Chapter 2 (A History of Medical Ethics).

1.3 Major Ethical Theories

Deontology (Duty-Based Ethics)

Associated with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), deontology holds that some actions are intrinsically right or wrong, regardless of their consequences. Moral duty — not outcome — is what matters. For Kant, the fundamental moral rule is the categorical imperative: act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it should become a universal law. In clinical medicine, a deontological approach insists that it is wrong to lie to a patient even if the lie would cause less distress — patients must be told the truth because they have an inherent right to know.

Consequentialism (Outcome-Based Ethics)

Consequentialism holds that the morally right action is the one that produces the best overall outcome. The most influential form is utilitarianism, associated with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which holds that we should act to maximize happiness and minimize suffering across all affected parties. In public health, consequentialist reasoning justifies quarantine: even though it restricts individual freedom, the harm prevented to the wider population outweighs the individual's loss of liberty.

Virtue Ethics

Rooted in the philosophy of Aristotle and revived in contemporary bioethics, virtue ethics shifts the central question from "What should I do?" to "What kind of person should I be?" The virtues relevant to medicine include honesty, compassion, prudence, courage, justice, and integrity. A virtuous physician does not need to consciously consult a rulebook before sitting at a patient's bedside and explaining bad news with care — compassion and honesty are part of who they are.

Islamic Ethical Theory

Islamic ethics is fundamentally theocentric — moral obligations derive from Allah's commands as revealed in the Quran and Sunnah and interpreted through Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh). Key jurisprudential principles with direct medical applications include: La darar wa la dirar (لا ضرر ولا ضرار)— "Do no harm and cause no harm to others"; Al-darurat tubih al-mahzurat (الضرورات تبيح المحظورات)— "Necessity permits what is prohibited"; and Al-maqasid al-shari'ah — the five objectives of Islamic law (preserving life, intellect, progeny, wealth, and religion)(حفظ النفس، العقل، النسل، المال، الدين — in some classical formulations al-'ird, العرض, "honour," appears in place of al-nasl).

1.4 The Four Principles of Biomedical Ethics

In 1979, Tom Beauchamp and James Childress published Principles of Biomedical Ethics, now in its eighth edition and arguably the most influential work in contemporary bioethics. They proposed four prima facie principles — meaning principles that are binding unless overridden by stronger competing considerations — as a common framework applicable across different moral traditions.

Principlism has become the most influential framework in global bioethics, yet scholars continue to debate how well four principles rooted in Western liberal morality can serve as universal, cross-cultural norms — a debate sharpened by the World Medical Association's recently revised International Code of Medical Ethics (Annoni, 2025). This is precisely why this book reads the four principles alongside the Islamic ethical tradition rather than treating either as complete on its own.

Principle 1: Autonomy

Autonomy (from Greek: autos = self, nomos = law) means self-rule — the right of a competent person to make informed decisions about their own life and medical care, free from coercion or undue influence. Respecting autonomy requires: providing patients with honest, complete, and comprehensible information; ensuring decisions are voluntary; and respecting the decisions of competent patients, even when you disagree with them. A 45-year-old adult refuses a life-saving blood transfusion. She is fully competent and understands the consequences. The principle of autonomy requires that her refusal be honored.

Principle 2: Beneficence

Beneficence means acting in the patient's best interest — actively doing good, not merely refraining from harm. It is the affirmative moral obligation to promote patient welfare, which encompasses physical, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. Beneficence can conflict with autonomy when a patient refuses treatment that the physician believes would help them. The historical tendency to override patient preferences "for their own good" is called paternalism — once the default of medical practice, now recognized as ethically problematic when applied to competent adults.

Principle 3: Non-maleficence

Primum non nocere — "first, do no harm" — is perhaps the most ancient principle in medicine. Non-maleficence requires that physicians not inflict harm on patients, and that potential harm of any intervention be weighed carefully against its expected benefits. The obligation is not to avoid all risk — virtually every medical intervention carries some risk — it is to ensure that the benefit justifies the risk, and that patients understand and consent to that balance.

Principle 4: Justice

Justice in healthcare has multiple dimensions: distributive justice (the fair allocation of scarce healthcare resources — who gets the transplant, the ICU bed, the expensive medication?); rights-based justice (respecting patients' rights to healthcare, dignity, and non-discrimination); and legal justice (upholding laws and professional regulations). Justice is perhaps the most challenging principle in practice because it operates at the level of systems, policies, and populations — not just individual patient encounters.

1.5 Ethics and Law: Overlapping but Not Identical

Medical ethics and medical law are related but distinct. They often point in the same direction — both prohibit operating on a patient without consent. But they are not synonymous. Law sets a floor of minimally acceptable behavior, enforced through legal sanctions. Ethics often demands more than the law requires. A physician who tells a patient the bare minimum required to obtain legal consent may be acting lawfully but not ethically.

Moreover, laws differ across countries while core ethical principles are more universal. A practice legal in one country may be deeply unethical; a practice restricted by law in one jurisdiction may be ethically mandatory in another context. As a future doctor practicing in Saudi Arabia, you will need to know both: the ethical principles that guide practice, and the specific laws and regulations governing medicine in Saudi Arabia. If it happens that you went abroad, you also need to be familiar with the laws that govern practice in the country you go to. Active euthanasia is one of the controversial topics in medical ethics. While permissible in some foreign countries, It is ethically unacceptable and prohibited in Islam and by law in Saudi Arabia.

1.6 The Structure of an Ethical Dilemma

Not every difficult situation is an ethical dilemma. Some difficult situations are primarily clinical (what is the diagnosis?), organizational (how do we manage this with limited resources?), or emotional (this is painful for everyone). An ethical dilemma has a specific structure: there is a decision to be made — inaction is itself a choice; there are at least two morally defensible options; each option violates at least one ethical principle or causes some moral harm; no option is clearly superior on all ethical dimensions.

Recognizing this structure is the first step in ethical reasoning. The second step is analyzing which principles are at stake, what the consequences of each option are, and — crucially — what the patient values and wants. The chapters that follow provide detailed frameworks for approaching specific types of dilemmas.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 1.1 — The Withheld Diagnosis

A 60-year-old man is admitted with advanced lung cancer. His family approaches you before his consultation and asks you not to tell him the diagnosis, saying "he will lose all hope and die faster." The patient himself has not asked you to withhold any information and appears alert and competent. Which ethical principles are in conflict here? How would you proceed?

Case 1.2 — The Paternalistic Physician

A senior doctor performs a procedure without proper consent, using the justification: "He's my patient — I know what's best for him." The patient did not object but was clearly not informed of the risks. A medical student witnesses this. Is this an ethical issue, a legal issue, or both? What should the student do?

Case 1.3 — The Last Ventilator

Your hospital has one remaining ventilator. Two patients need it simultaneously: a 30-year-old with reversible respiratory failure, and a 65-year-old professor with a chronic condition in acute respiratory distress. Both have equal medical need, but the younger patient has a higher probability of survival. How do the four principles apply? Does justice require you to consider age?

Case 1.4 — The Card in the Wallet

A 24-year-old man is brought to the emergency department after a motorcycle crash and needs an urgent blood transfusion to survive. He is unconscious and no family is present. A signed card in his wallet states that he refuses all blood products on personal grounds. The team must decide within minutes. Which principles are in tension (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence)? How does a prior, clearly expressed refusal weigh against the duty to preserve life (hifz al-nafs) and the Saudi legal duty to treat in an emergency? Show how the four-principles framework, Saudi law, and the Islamic objective of preserving life each bear on the decision.

References

• Al-Jarallah, J. (2021). Akhlaqiyyat al-tibb [Medical ethics] (أخلاقيات الطب).

Annoni, M. (2026). Toward a global bioethics: Principlism and the problem of political legitimacy. Bioethics, 40(1), 5–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13434

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Faden, R. R., & Beauchamp, T. L. (1986). A history and theory of informed consent. Oxford University Press.

Ghaly, M. (Ed.). (2016). Islamic perspectives on the principles of biomedical ethics. Imperial College Press.

Gillon, R. (1994). Medical ethics: Four principles plus attention to scope. BMJ, 309(6948), 184–188. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.309.6948.184

Padela, A. I. (2007). Islamic medical ethics: A primer. Bioethics, 21(3), 169–178.

Rispler-Chaim, V. (1993). Islamic medical ethics in the twentieth century. E. J. Brill.

Sachedina, A. (2009). Islamic biomedical ethics: Principles and application. Oxford University Press.

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

• World Medical Association. (2015). Medical ethics manual (3rd ed.).

• World Medical Association. (2017). Declaration of Geneva (2017 revision). https://www.wma.net

Chapter 2: A History of Medical Ethics

In the ninth century, in a town in upper Mesopotamia, a physician named Ishaq ibn Ali al-Ruhawi sat down to write a book unlike any before it. Other authors had explained how to diagnose a fever or set a bone; al-Ruhawi wrote about how a physician ought to live. His “Adab al-Tabib” — The Conduct of the Physician — devoted twenty chapters to the doctor’s character, duties, and accountability, and is regarded today as the first book in history dedicated entirely to medical ethics. More than a thousand years later, his central conviction still stands: that medicine is not merely a craft to be mastered, but a moral trust to be kept. This chapter follows that trust across four millennia.

2.1 Why History Matters to the Practitioner

It is tempting for a busy trainee to regard the history of medical ethics as an ornament — a set of names and dates to be admired and then forgotten at the bedside. This is a mistake. Almost every rule you will be asked to follow, from obtaining informed consent to protecting a patient’s confidentiality, is the residue of a concrete historical struggle. Someone, somewhere, was harmed; a profession or a society reflected on that harm; and a duty was articulated so that it would not happen again. To know the history is to understand why the rule exists, and therefore to apply it with judgment rather than as mere ritual (Jonsen, 2000).

History also guards against two opposite errors. The first is to imagine that medical ethics is a recent, Western invention imported into the Muslim world. As this chapter shows, a rich tradition of physician ethics flourished in the Islamic civilisation centuries before the modern Western codes, and its concerns — competence, character, confidentiality, and accountability before God — remain strikingly contemporary (Padela, 2007). The second error is to assume that progress is automatic and complete. The atrocities of the twentieth century were committed by highly trained physicians in technically advanced societies. Ethical knowledge, unlike scientific knowledge, is not inherited; each generation must learn it anew.

2.2 Ancient Foundations

Mesopotamia and the Code of Hammurabi

The oldest surviving rules governing the practice of medicine are found in the Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian legal collection dating to roughly 1754 BCE. Several of its provisions fix the surgeon’s fee according to the patient’s social rank and prescribe penalties — including the cutting off of the surgeon’s hand — when an operation caused death or the loss of an eye. The code is not an ethical treatise; it is a legal one. Yet it embodies an idea that medical ethics has never abandoned: that the healer is accountable to the community for the outcomes of treatment, and that the power to heal carries a corresponding liability for harm (Baker & McCullough, 2009).

Egypt, India, and China

In ancient Egypt, physicians worked within established protocols recorded in medical papyri, and departure from accepted practice could expose the practitioner to sanction — an early form of the standard of care. In India, the Caraka Samhita (composed in the early centuries CE from older oral traditions) required the physician to be of good character, to keep the secrets of the household, and to devote himself to the patient ‘with all thy heart and soul.’ In China, the Confucian ideal of the physician as a ‘scholar who practises benevolence’ tied medical competence to moral cultivation. Across these civilisations, three themes recur: the physician must be technically competent, of upright character, and discreet (Baker & McCullough, 2009).

2.3 The Greco-Roman Tradition

The most influential single document in the history of Western medical ethics is the Hippocratic Oath, associated with the school of Cos and the figure of Hippocrates (c. 460–370 BCE). The Oath bound the physician to act for the benefit of the sick, to abstain from “whatever is deleterious and mischievous,” to preserve confidentiality, and to refrain from sexual relations with patients and from giving a deadly drug or an abortifacient pessary. Equally important was the broader Hippocratic Corpus, which articulated the maxim that the physician should “help, or at least do no harm” — the seed of the principle of non-maleficence, later crystallised in the Latin tag primum non nocere (Jonsen, 2000).

Two features of the Hippocratic achievement deserve emphasis. First, it treated medicine as a profession — a vocation with internal moral standards distinct from trade. Second, it grounded those standards in the character of the practitioner rather than in external enforcement; the Oath is sworn before the gods, making the physician’s conscience the primary regulator. The Roman physician Galen (129–c. 216 CE) extended this tradition, insisting that the best physician is also a philosopher, competent in logic, natural science, and ethics alike. Through Galen, the Hippocratic ideal passed to the medieval world — and, decisively, into the Arabic-speaking civilisation that would preserve and transform it.

2.4 The Islamic Golden Age

Between the eighth and thirteenth centuries CE, while much of Europe entered its early medieval period, the Islamic civilisation produced an extraordinary flowering of medicine and of medical ethics. Greek medical works were translated into Arabic in the great translation movement centred on Baghdad, and Muslim physicians did not merely transmit this inheritance but criticised, systematised, and extended it (Pormann & Savage-Smith, 2007).

Al-Ruhawi and the first treatise on medical ethics

The single most important landmark is the Adab al-Tabib (The Conduct of the Physician), written by Ishaq ibn Ali al-Ruhawi in the ninth century CE. It is widely regarded as the first book in history devoted entirely to medical ethics. In twenty chapters, al-Ruhawi addresses the physician’s faith and character, the examination of practitioners, the duties owed to patients, the dignity of the profession, and the patient’s reciprocal obligations. He describes the physician as a “guardian of souls and bodies,” insists that the doctor first heal his own moral failings, and proposes peer review of practice — ideas that anticipate modern professional regulation by a millennium (al-Ruhawi, trans. Levey, 1967).

Al-Razi, Ibn Sina, and al-Majusi

Abu Bakr al-Razi (Rhazes, c. 865–925 CE) combined unmatched clinical observation with sharp ethical commentary, warning against quackery and urging physicians to keep learning throughout their lives. Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037 CE), whose Canon of Medicine dominated medical education in both East and West for five centuries, embedded ethical considerations throughout his clinical writing and emphasised the physician’s duty to the whole person and the centrality of the patient’s trust. Ali ibn al-Abbas al-Majusi (d. c. 994 CE) likewise prefaced his medical encyclopaedia with explicit ethical instruction. What distinguishes the Islamic tradition is its grounding in Islamic theology and jurisprudence: the physician’s duties were understood as religious obligations, oriented by the higher objectives of Islamic law (maqasid) — which include the preservation of life, intellect, progeny, property, and religion (Al-Bar & Chamsi-Pasha, 2015).

Early Public Regulation

Islamic societies also developed an institutional mechanism of oversight. An appointed official responsible for supervising the markets and public morals examined physicians, pharmacists, and bonesetters, and could bar the incompetent from practice. Here, ethical aspiration was translated into administrative regulation — a public guarantee of competence that prefigures the licensing functions of a modern health authority (Aksoy & Tenik, 2002).

2.5 The Medieval and Renaissance West

In the Latin West, medical ethics was cultivated in the monasteries, the new universities of Salerno, Bologna, and Paris, and the craft guilds that regulated entry to practice. The Jewish physician-philosopher Maimonides (1138–1204), who wrote in Arabic and served as court physician in Cairo, exemplifies the deep interpenetration of these traditions; his medical-ethical writings echo both Hippocratic and Islamic ideals of service and humility. Through the medieval period, the regulation of medicine shifted gradually from individual conscience toward collective institutions — guilds, faculties, and licensing statutes — that claimed authority to define who might practise and how (Baker & McCullough, 2009).

2.6 The Birth of Modern Professional Ethics

The phrase “medical ethics” in its modern sense was coined by the English physician Thomas Percival, whose Medical Ethics (1803) grew out of a dispute over staffing and conduct at the Manchester Infirmary. Percival’s book set out the duties of physicians to patients, to one another, and to the public, and framed those duties in terms of professional dignity and mutual obligation. It was self-consciously a code for a collective — the profession — rather than advice to the individual practitioner (Percival, 1803).

Percival’s influence was decisive across the Atlantic. When the American Medical Association was founded in 1847, it adopted a Code of Ethics drawn largely from Percival’s text — the first national code of medical ethics promulgated by an organised profession. With it, medical ethics acquired a new form: no longer only an oath sworn by an individual or counsel offered by a sage, but a written code adopted and enforced by a professional body (Riddick, 2003). This is the institutional ancestor of every modern code, including the codes issued by Saudi authorities today.

2.7 The Twentieth Century: Atrocity and Reform

The modern field of research ethics was, in large part, born out of moral catastrophe. During the Second World War, Nazi physicians subjected prisoners to lethal experiments — immersion in freezing water, low-pressure chambers simulating high altitude, deliberate infection, and mutilating surgery — without any consent whatsoever. The trial of these physicians at Nuremberg produced, in 1947, the Nuremberg Code, which established for the first time in international law that “the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential” (Nuremberg Military Tribunals, 1949).

In response to the same horrors, the World Medical Association, founded in 1947, issued the Declaration of Geneva (1948) as a modern restatement of the Hippocratic Oath, and later the Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which remains the foundational international statement of ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects (World Medical Association, 2013). Yet abuse was not confined to totalitarian regimes. In the United States, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis (1932–1972) followed some 400 poor African-American men with syphilis for forty years, deliberately withholding treatment — even after penicillin became standard — and deceiving them about their condition (Brandt, 1978). The public exposure of Tuskegee led directly to the Belmont Report (1979), which distilled three principles for the ethical conduct of research: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice (National Commission, 1979).

2.8 The Rise of Bioethics

The late twentieth century saw “medical ethics” broaden into “bioethics” — a wider field engaging not only physicians but philosophers, lawyers, theologians, and the public, and confronting questions raised by new technologies: organ transplantation, mechanical ventilation, dialysis, assisted reproduction, and genetic engineering. The most influential framework to emerge was the “four principles” approach of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, first published in 1979, which organised moral reasoning in healthcare around respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice (Beauchamp & Childress, 2019). Its appeal lay in offering a shared, relatively culture-neutral vocabulary that practitioners of different backgrounds could use to analyse cases together.

Parallel to the secular bioethics movement, a self-conscious Islamic bioethics took shape. The Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS), founded in Kuwait, issued the first Islamic Code of Medical Ethics in 1981, and a series of international Islamic juridical bodies — most importantly the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation — began to issue collective religious rulings (fatwas) on questions such as brain death, organ donation, and assisted reproduction (Al-Bar & Chamsi-Pasha, 2015; Rispler-Chaim, 1993). Contemporary Muslim bioethics thus proceeds on two tracks at once: the principlist analysis shared with global bioethics, and the juridical reasoning of the Islamic legal tradition (Sachedina, 2009).

2.9 Medical Ethics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf

For the Saudi trainee, the most relevant recent history is the institutionalisation of medical ethics within the Kingdom. Saudi practice draws on two converging streams: the global codes and principles described above, and the rulings of Islamic jurisprudence as articulated by bodies such as the Islamic Fiqh Academy and the IOMS, which has held many of its landmark symposia in the Gulf. Decisions reached in these forums — for example, the acceptance of brain-death criteria and the permissibility of organ donation under defined conditions — directly shaped Saudi clinical regulation (Al-Bar & Chamsi-Pasha, 2015).

Institutionally, the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS), established in 1992, became the body responsible for accrediting training and for setting professional standards, and it issued a Code of Ethics for Healthcare Practitioners that binds physicians working in the Kingdom (Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, 2014). Oversight of research ethics was consolidated under a national framework — the National Committee of Bioethics — supported by the Law of Ethics of Research on Living Creatures and its implementing regulations, which require institutional review board approval for human research. A formal Patients’ Bill of Rights, adopted by the Ministry of Health, set out the entitlements of patients within the Saudi system. Together these instruments mean that the Saudi physician today practises within an ethical order that is at once thoroughly modern and explicitly grounded in the Islamic tradition.

2.10 Recurring Themes and Lessons

Surveyed across four millennia, the history of medical ethics is not a random sequence but a set of recurring themes. The demand for competence and the accountability of the healer appear already in Hammurabi; the union of skill with character runs from Caraka and Hippocrates through al-Ruhawi to Percival; confidentiality is enjoined in the Hippocratic Oath and the Islamic adab literature alike; and the requirement of consent, though ancient in spirit, was forced into explicit international law only by the catastrophes of the twentieth century.

Three lessons follow for the trainee. First, the core duties of the physician are remarkably stable across cultures and centuries, which is why they can claim something close to universal authority. Second, ethical safeguards are typically written in the aftermath of harm; the rules you inherit are paid for in others’ suffering, and to neglect them is to invite its repetition. Third, in the Saudi context the global and the Islamic traditions are not rivals but partners — the one supplying a shared analytical language, the other supplying the deeper grounding of duty in the divine purpose of preserving human life and dignity. The chapters that follow apply these inherited commitments to the concrete dilemmas of contemporary practice.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 2.1 — The Oath and the Modern Trainee

At a white-coat ceremony, a graduating class recites a modern adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath. A student objects that an ancient pagan oath has no authority over a Muslim physician. Drawing on this chapter, how would you respond? In what sense do the Hippocratic, Islamic, and modern codes share a common moral core, and where do they differ?

Case 2.2 — Learning from al-Ruhawi

Al-Ruhawi proposed that physicians’ work be reviewed by their peers and that a doctor must “first heal himself” of moral faults. A senior colleague dismisses peer review as a foreign, bureaucratic imposition. Using the history in this chapter, argue whether modern peer review and clinical audit are continuous with, or alien to, the Islamic medical tradition.

Case 2.3 — Why Consent Became Absolute

A researcher proposes enrolling patients in a trial without full disclosure, arguing that the science is sound and the risk small. Explain, with reference to Nuremberg, Tuskegee, and Belmont, why the history of the twentieth century makes voluntary informed consent non-negotiable — even when a study seems harmless.

References

Aksoy, S., & Tenik, A. (2002). The ‘four principles of bioethics’ as found in 13th century Muslim scholar Mawlana’s teachings. BMC Medical Ethics, 3(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-3-4

Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18428-9

al-Ruhawi, I. A. (1967). Medical ethics of medieval Islam with special reference to al-Ruhawi’s “Practical ethics of the physician” (M. Levey, Trans.). Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 57(3), 1–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/1006137

Baker, R. B., & McCullough, L. B. (Eds.). (2009). The Cambridge world history of medical ethics. Cambridge University Press.

Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Brandt, A. M. (1978). Racism and research: The case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The Hastings Center Report, 8(6), 21–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/3561468

Jonsen, A. R. (2000). A short history of medical ethics. Oxford University Press.

National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (1979). The Belmont Report: Ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Nuremberg Military Tribunals. (1949). The Nuremberg Code. In Trials of war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10 (Vol. 2, pp. 181–182). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Padela, A. I. (2007). Islamic medical ethics: A primer. Bioethics, 21(3), 169–178. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00540.x

Percival, T. (1803). Medical ethics; or, a code of institutes and precepts, adapted to the professional conduct of physicians and surgeons. S. Russell.

Pormann, P. E., & Savage-Smith, E. (2007). Medieval Islamic medicine. Edinburgh University Press.

Riddick, F. A. (2003). The code of medical ethics of the American Medical Association. The Ochsner Journal, 5(2), 6–10.

Rispler-Chaim, V. (1993). Islamic medical ethics in the twentieth century. E. J. Brill.

Sachedina, A. (2009). Islamic biomedical ethics: Principles and application. Oxford University Press.

Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners. SCFHS.

World Medical Association. (2013). World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. JAMA, 310(20), 2191–2194. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.281053

Chapter 3: The Professional Trainee

In March 1984, an eighteen-year-old college student named Libby Zion died in a New York teaching hospital within hours of admission. The doctors caring for her were exhausted residents, deep into shifts of more than thirty hours, lightly supervised and juggling dozens of patients at once. Her father, a journalist, refused to let the matter rest, and his campaign exposed a training culture that ran its trainees to the point of danger. The outcome was a wave of reforms limiting how long a resident may work and requiring genuine supervision. Her death is a lasting reminder that a trainee’s duties — and a trainee’s limits — are themselves matters of ethics. This chapter is about what it means to learn medicine responsibly.

3.1 The Decision You Have Already Made

You chose medicine. That decision — whether it came to you at the age of ten or the night before your application deadline — carries consequences that most other careers do not. Medicine is not simply a job. It is a profession, and a profession that places demands on its members that go beyond technical competence.

The word profession derives from the Latin profiteri — to declare publicly. When you enter medical school, you make an implicit declaration: that you will place your patients' interests above your own convenience, that you will maintain standards of honesty and integrity even when no one is watching, and that you will accept the moral obligations that come with access to people's bodies, lives, and secrets.

Those obligations do not begin when you graduate. They begin today. The habits of thought, behavior, and character you develop as a student are the habits you will carry into clinical practice. The medical student who copies in an exam is practicing a version of the doctor who falsifies a patient's records. Professional identity is not granted at graduation; it is built — or neglected — incrementally, through thousands of small choices.

3.2 What Is Professionalism?

Professionalism is one of the most widely discussed and contested concepts in medical education. The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS) defines professionalism as: "A collection of values, attitudes, behaviors, and relationships that act as the foundation of the healthcare profession's contract with society."

Three elements of this definition deserve attention. Values and attitudes come first. Professionalism is not primarily a set of rules to follow; it is a set of inner dispositions — honesty, compassion, integrity, humility — that, when genuinely held, produce professional behavior naturally. Behaviors are the visible expression of those inner values: punctuality, appropriate dress, respectful communication, honest self-assessment. A contract with society reminds us that professionalism is not merely about personal character — society grants physicians extraordinary privileges in exchange for consistent fulfillment of obligations.

The SaudiMEDs Framework — the national competency framework for Saudi medical graduates — identifies professionalism as one of its six core themes, alongside medical knowledge, clinical skills, communication, research, and community service. It expects graduates to demonstrate commitment to professional development, ethical practice in all clinical situations, accountability to patients, colleagues, and the healthcare system, respect for patients' dignity, culture, and autonomy, and Islamic values integrated into professional practice.

3.3 Academic Integrity (six fundamental values)

Academic integrity is the moral code of scholarship. It requires that all academic work — assignments, examinations, research projects, presentations — represents your own honest effort, properly attributed. The International Center for Academic Integrity identifies six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage.

Honesty

Honesty means representing work truthfully and accurately. In the academic context, this includes reporting data as collected, citing sources correctly, and acknowledging the contributions of others. A student who misrepresents their clinical log hours or embellishes a case report violates honesty. In clinical practice, dishonesty — falsifying a drug administration record, concealing a near-miss, or misreporting a physical finding — can directly harm patients.

Trust

Trust is the foundation upon which academic and clinical communities function. Faculty trust students to complete their own work; patients trust physicians to act in their best interests; colleagues trust one another to share accurate information. When a student submits a colleague's notes as their own, they erode trust within the cohort. When a physician fabricates consent documentation, they betray the patient's trust and place themselves and their institution at legal and ethical risk.

Fairness

Fairness requires that all students be evaluated by the same standards and that no student gain an unfair advantage over another. Sharing examination questions, requesting preferential grading, or exploiting relationships with faculty to obtain better placements are all violations of fairness. This value extends to clinical work: fair resource allocation, equitable access to procedures and learning opportunities, and unbiased assessment of patients regardless of background are all expressions of fairness in medicine.

Respect

Respect encompasses regard for persons, processes, and the integrity of the academic community. It means treating peers, patients, and supervisors with dignity; acknowledging the rules of assessment as legitimate; and honouring the intellectual work of others through proper attribution. Disruptive behaviour in clinical settings, dismissive treatment of junior colleagues, and failure to obtain proper consent for using a patient's case in a presentation are all failures of respect.

Responsibility

Responsibility means taking ownership of one's actions and their consequences. A student who copies another's work cannot blame stress, time pressure, or the availability of that work — the choice, and its consequences, remain their own. In clinical practice, responsibility means following up on results you ordered, completing a handover properly, and reporting errors even when doing so is uncomfortable. It is the antidote to the diffusion of accountability that makes systems unsafe.

Courage

Courage is the willingness to do the right thing even when it is difficult, unpopular, or personally costly. It means reporting a colleague's misconduct, speaking up when you observe an error, challenging a senior when patient safety is at risk, and refusing to participate in academic dishonesty even under peer pressure. Courage is what transforms ethical knowledge into ethical behaviour. Without it, understanding principles is insufficient — the moral life of a physician requires the willingness to act on them.

3.4 Examples of academic integrity misconduct

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the presentation of someone else's words, ideas, data, or images as your own without proper attribution. Forms include: direct plagiarism (copying text verbatim without quotation marks or citation); paraphrasing plagiarism (rewording another's ideas without credit); self-plagiarism (resubmitting your own previously submitted work as new); mosaic plagiarism (stitching together phrases from multiple sources without attribution); and AI-generated plagiarism (submitting text generated by an AI tool as your own original work).

Cheating, Fabrication, and Ghostwriting

Cheating in examinations — using unauthorized materials, communicating with other students, obtaining questions in advance — is a direct fraud against the institution and against every student who prepared honestly. Fabrication means inventing data, results, or sources. Ghostwriting is the submission of work written entirely by someone else — whether a paid service, a fellow student, or an AI — as your own. Each violates academic integrity and represents a failure of character that, if uncorrected, will manifest in professional life.

3.5 Regulations Governing Trainees

As a trainee — whether an undergraduate medical student or a postgraduate intern or resident — you are governed by several overlapping frameworks: your institution's conduct regulations (academic integrity, attendance, examination and clinical conduct, dress code); for postgraduate trainees, the training regulations of the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS); the SCFHS Code of Ethics (which applies to all healthcare practitioners, including trainees); and Ministry of Health regulations governing conduct in teaching hospitals.

The most commonly applicable regulations for trainees involve attendance (minimum requirements exist for all lectures and clinical sessions), dress code (a professional appearance appropriate to the clinical setting is mandatory), examination conduct (violations are documented and may appear in your permanent academic record), and mobile phone use in clinical areas (hospital regulations exist for reasons of infection control, patient privacy, and professional focus).

For Postgraduate Trainees: Once you graduate you are no longer only a learner. As an intern or resident you occupy a dual role — still training under supervision, yet already responsible for patients and often teaching the students and juniors beneath you. Three duties become central: practising within your scope and level of supervision (and saying so when a task exceeds it); escalating early when a patient deteriorates or a problem is beyond your competence; and keeping honest records — including your training logbook and e-portfolio, whose integrity the SCFHS treats as seriously as any clinical document.

3.6 E-Professionalism and Social Media

Social media has transformed how medical students communicate, learn, and present themselves to the world. It has also created an entirely new domain of professionalism challenges. The AMA, BMA, and SCFHS have all issued guidance on this topic.

A study of medical students found broadly positive attitudes toward maintaining a professional social-media presence, but also a gap between what students consider acceptable for themselves and what they expect society to demand of them as physicians — evidence that e-professionalism is best taught with concrete, evidence-based guidance rather than prohibition alone (Runyon et al., 2023).

The Permanence Problem

The fundamental difference between a spoken comment in the hospital corridor and a post on social media is permanence and reach. A thoughtless remark to a colleague may be forgotten. The same remark posted online may be screenshotted, shared, reported to your medical school, and recovered years later during a licensing investigation. Assume that anything you post could be read by your patient, your dean, a journalist, or a licensing board. Post accordingly.

What Constitutes a Professionalism Violation Online?

Common violations include: breaching patient confidentiality (posting identifying details about a case, even without using the patient's name — combinations of diagnosis, age, hospital, and date can identify an individual); derogatory or discriminatory language about patients or colleagues; inappropriate images in clinical settings; blurring personal and professional identity; and misrepresentation of qualifications.

Practical Guidelines

Separate professional and personal accounts where possible. Pause before posting: ask whether the content could embarrass you, your institution, or your patients. Never post patient information, even anonymized, without explicit ethical approval. Disclose your student status when discussing clinical topics publicly. Regularly review your own online presence and audit what is publicly visible.

3.7 Core Attributes of a Professional Medical Student (in training)

Honesty and Integrity

Honesty means telling the truth — to patients, to supervisors, and to yourself — even when the truth is uncomfortable. Integrity means alignment between your stated values and your actual behavior; it is what you do when no one is looking. In clinical practice, honesty will require you to say "I don't know" when you don't, to acknowledge errors rather than conceal them, and to give patients information they may not want to hear.

Empathy and Compassion

Empathy is the capacity to understand another person's experience from their perspective. Compassion adds to empathy the motivation to relieve suffering. Research consistently shows that empathy in medical students declines during clinical training — particularly in the third and fourth years. This decline is not inevitable, but it requires active resistance. The patient on the ward is not a "case" or a "learning opportunity"; they are a person experiencing fear, pain, and vulnerability.

Critical Self-Appraisal

The ability to assess your own knowledge, skills, and performance honestly — including recognizing your limitations — is one of the most important and most difficult professional attributes to develop. The Dunning-Kruger effect (the cognitive bias whereby incompetent individuals overestimate their own competence) is well documented in medicine. Students ( and doctors) who are unaware of what they do not know pose a genuine clinical risk.

Responsibility and Reliability

Patients, supervisors, and colleagues must be able to depend on you. Responsibility means completing assigned tasks, following up on results, attending scheduled commitments, and taking ownership of your role in a patient's care. Reliability means doing these things consistently. A lapse that seems minor in the student context — failing to review a case you were asked to present — can translate in clinical practice into a delayed diagnosis or a broken promise to a patient.

3.8 Ethical Dilemmas in Medical Student Training

Witnessing Unprofessional Conduct

Perhaps the most common ethical challenge facing medical students is observing a senior colleague behave unprofessionally or unethically. The pressure to remain silent is powerful — you are junior, you depend on this person for teaching and assessment. But silence makes you complicit, and it deprives patients of protection they deserve. The ethical course is to act: for immediate patient safety risks, speak up in the moment; for non-urgent unprofessional conduct, report through appropriate channels — your training supervisor, the clinical tutor, or the professionalism officer.

The Hidden Curriculum

Medical professionalism is taught explicitly in courses like this one, but it is also transmitted through what educators call the hidden curriculum: the unspoken norms, behaviors, and values that medical students absorb by watching how senior doctors actually behave. You are not merely a passive recipient of the hidden curriculum. You are already contributing to it. How you treat the cleaner who mops the ward, the medical secretary who processes your paperwork, and the fellow student who is struggling — these behaviors establish norms that your peers observe and absorb.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 2.1 — The Group Assignment

A group of five students is assigned a 2,000-word essay on informed consent. Three students write their sections; two contribute nothing but submit the work under their names and receive the same grade. The two non-contributing students argue that no plagiarism occurred. Are they right? What are the ethical issues? What should the contributing students do?

Case 2.2 — The Clinical Ward Post

A medical student posts a photograph on Instagram of herself at the nurses' station in her white coat. In the background, a patient's name and diagnosis are visible on a whiteboard. A classmate who sees the post tells her privately. What should each party do? What are the ethical obligations?

Case 2.3 — The Observed Procedure

During a urology rotation, a student observes a senior consultant catheterize an elderly confused patient without introducing himself, explaining the procedure, or asking for consent. Afterward, the consultant asks the student to document the procedure in the patient's notes. What ethical issues are present? What should the student do about the documentation request and about the conduct observed?

Case 2.4 — The Examination Whisper

During a multiple-choice examination, the student seated next to you whispers an answer to a question. You did not ask for the help, and you know the answer independently. You do not respond. Later, you discover the student reported you to the supervisor, claiming you were the one who whispered. What are the ethical dimensions here? How would you respond?

References

• AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. (2011). Professionalism in the use of social media.

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• British Medical Association. (2020). Ethics toolkit for medical students: Social media.

• Cruess, S. R., & Cruess, R. L. (2006). Professionalism and medicine's social contract with society. Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research.

Runyon, A., Heaven, S., Forster, L., Kerr, A. M., Shaub, T. L., & Simon, J. E. (2024). US medical students' attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control regarding social media and online professionalism: A single institution study. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 36(3), 293–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/10401334.2023.2211967

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

• Saudi Dean's Committee, Ministry of Education. (2017). SaudiMEDs framework.

Chapter 4: The Professional Doctor

For most of history, anyone could call himself a doctor. In Britain in the 1850s, a patient had no reliable way to tell a trained physician from a confident impostor selling coloured water; the qualified and the quack advertised side by side. In 1858, Parliament passed the Medical Act, creating a single official register of recognised practitioners and a council empowered to strike off those who disgraced the profession. With it, medicine claimed something new: the right, and the duty, to regulate itself. That bargain — society grants the profession its autonomy, and in return the profession polices its own standards — is the essence of what it means to be a professional. This chapter examines the privileges, and the obligations, that come with the title.

4.1 From Student to Doctor: A Threshold, not a Transformation

The transition from medical student to doctor is marked by a ceremony, a certificate, and a new title. It is not, however, a transformation of character. The physician you become is built from the student you are. The habits, values, and conduct you develop during your training follow you across that threshold and into every clinical encounter you will have for the next four decades.

4.2 The Medical Profession: Three Defining Features

1. Expert Knowledge Not Available to the Public

A profession is built on a body of specialized knowledge that the practitioner has earned through years of rigorous training — knowledge that the patient or client cannot independently verify. This knowledge asymmetry is the foundation of medical authority — and its most significant ethical vulnerability. The same expertise that allows physicians to help patients can be used to exploit, deceive, or neglect them. Professionalism is the set of commitments that ensures the knowledge is used for the patient's benefit.

2. Self-Regulation

Professions are granted the privilege of regulating their own members — setting entry standards, defining acceptable conduct, and disciplining those who fall short. In Saudi Arabia, this function is performed primarily by the SCFHS, which sets standards of training and competence, issues licenses to practice, and enforces the Code of Ethics for Healthcare Practitioners.

3. Service Before Self-Interest

The hallmark of a profession is the orientation of practice. A tradesperson serves the customer in exchange for payment; if the transaction is not profitable, the tradesperson may decline. A professional serves the patient even at personal cost, because the professional's primary duty is to the person in need, not to personal gain. This does not mean that doctors are expected to work without payment — it means that when professional obligation and self-interest conflict, the professional duty takes precedence.

4.3 Medical Professionalism: Formal Definition and Charter

The SCFHS Code of Ethics defines professionalism as: "A collection of values, attitudes, behaviors, and relationships that act as the foundation of the healthcare profession's contract with society."

The landmark ABIM Foundation Charter on Medical Professionalism (2002) articulates three fundamental principles: primacy of patient welfare; patient autonomy; and social justice. The Charter also identifies ten professional commitments: commitment to professional competence; honesty with patients; patient confidentiality; maintaining appropriate relations with patients; improving quality of care; improving access to care; a just distribution of finite resources; scientific knowledge; managing conflicts of interest; and professional responsibilities.

4.4 The Islamic Concept of Medical Vocation

Islam provides a distinct and powerful framework for understanding medicine as a calling rather than merely a profession. The Quran states: "Whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved all of humanity." (Al-Ma'idah 5:32). For the Muslim physician, clinical practice is not merely the application of technical skill; it is a form of worship ('ibadah), a fulfillment of the Islamic duty of care to one's fellow human beings, and an expression of the divine attribute of mercy (rahmah).

Niyyah (intention) occupies a central place in Islamic professional ethics. The hadith "Verily, actions are by intentions" (Bukhari and Muslim) implies that the moral value of a clinical act is determined partly by the physician's motivation. A doctor who performs a procedure with sincere intent to help the patient, even if the outcome is poor, has fulfilled their moral obligation. A doctor who performs the same procedure for financial gain or professional advancement, regardless of outcome, has not.

4.5 Professional Attributes of the Physician

Clinical Competence

The first obligation of any doctor is to be good at their job. All the ethical commitments in the world cannot substitute for the knowledge and skill required to diagnose and treat disease. Competence is not static; it must be actively maintained through continuing medical education, engagement with current evidence, and honest recognition of one's limitations. A physician who continues to practice in an area where their skills have become inadequate is acting unethically, even if no individual patient has yet been harmed.

Honesty and Transparency

The SCFHS Code states: "The healthcare practitioner shall be honest and truthful in all professional interactions." This encompasses honesty with patients about diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment options; honesty with colleagues and supervisors about one's own errors and limitations; and honesty in clinical documentation. Particular attention should be paid to error disclosure — patients who have been harmed by medical error have a right to know, both to seek appropriate redress and to make informed decisions about their ongoing care.

Compassion

Compassion is not sentimentality. It is the capacity to be moved by the suffering of another and to be motivated by that response to act — while maintaining the clinical judgment that emotion alone cannot provide. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Verily, Allah is gentle and loves gentleness in all things." (Muslim). Gentleness in clinical practice — in how you examine, how you explain, how you break bad news — is not merely a communication technique; in Islamic ethics it is a moral obligation.

4.6 Professional Misconduct: Recognizing the Boundaries

Professional misconduct refers to conduct that falls below the standards expected of a registered healthcare practitioner. The SCFHS identifies the following as actionable forms of misconduct:

Clinical Misconduct

• Practicing outside the scope of competence or license

• Abandoning a patient under one's care without adequate alternative arrangement

• Falsifying medical records or documentation

• Failure to obtain informed consent for procedures

Integrity Violations

• Fraud: billing for services not rendered, falsifying credentials

• Misrepresentation: claiming qualifications, experience, or outcomes that are not accurate

• Conflicts of interest: undisclosed financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies or other commercial entities

Disciplinary Procedures

When a complaint of professional misconduct is received by the SCFHS or by a hospital, a formal process is initiated: investigation (review of the facts, interview of the practitioner and witnesses); fitness to practice assessment; and outcome — ranging from no further action, to remediation requirements, to suspension, to revocation of license. Disciplinary proceedings are primarily about patient protection, not punishment.

4.7 E-Professionalism: The Physician Online

You Are Always a doctor

When you graduate, your professional identity does not switch off at the end of the working day. A post made on a Saturday evening, on a personal account, under your real name — or under an anonymous name that can be traced — is a professional act. The Australian Medical Association's social-media guidance states it plainly: "You're always a doctor." This does not mean that physicians have no private life. It means that the professional standards that govern your clinical conduct also govern your public behavior, including online behavior.

A scoping review of e-professionalism across the health professions confirms this double edge: social media offers real benefits — professional networking, education, and public-health communication — but also recurrent dangers, including loosened accountability, breaches of confidentiality, blurred professional boundaries, and disciplinary consequences (Vukušić Rukavina et al., 2021).

Confidentiality in the Digital Age

Patient confidentiality extends fully to the digital environment. Never post patient information on social media regardless of whether you use the patient's name. A combination of diagnosis, age, hospital, and approximate date is often enough to identify an individual. Never photograph patients, their records, their imaging, or their clinical environment without explicit consent and institutional approval. Never discuss cases in identifiable terms in public online forums, including WhatsApp groups that include non-clinical members.

Positive Professional Uses of Social Media

Used well, social media is a powerful tool for continuing education; professional networking; public health communication; health advocacy; and creating educational content for students and trainees. The physician who uses social media thoughtfully and ethically is not merely avoiding harm — they are contributing to a better-informed public and a more connected profession.

4.8 Self-Regulation: The Hardest Professional Duty

Physicians are at significantly elevated risk for burnout, depression, substance misuse, and compassion fatigue compared to the general population. The SCFHS Code states that practitioners have a responsibility to "seek help when their health or capacity to practice may be impaired." This is not weakness; it is a professional obligation. A physician who practices while impaired — whether by illness, exhaustion, or substance use — poses a risk to patients.

When you observe a colleague whose practice appears impaired or unsafe, the appropriate response is calibrated to severity: for mild concerns, address directly with the colleague, privately and respectfully; for persistent or serious concerns, escalate to a clinical lead, department head, or relevant hospital committee; for immediate patient safety risks, intervene directly and report immediately. Using these mechanisms is not a betrayal of collegiality; it is a fulfillment of professional duty.

For Postgraduate Trainees — supervising and being supervised: As a resident you are simultaneously supervised and a supervisor. Practise within your licensed scope, escalate early, and document honestly; but also recognise your duties toward the students and juniors you now teach — give graded responsibility and honest feedback, and never haze or mistreat them. Mistreating juniors and dishonest sign-off are explicit professionalism lapses the SCFHS can sanction. Saying a task is above your level is professional maturity, not weakness.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 3.1 — The Impaired Colleague

You are a junior doctor on a busy medical ward. A colleague arrives for a night shift having been on call for the previous 30 hours with no sleep. You notice their eyes are bloodshot, their responses slow, and they appear unable to focus on the handover notes. They twice misread a drug chart during the briefing. When you mention your concern, they insist they are fine and ask you not to make a scene. There are four patients who will need review overnight. What do you do? What professional obligations apply?

Case 3.2 — The Pharmaceutical Gift

A pharmaceutical company representative visits your department and leaves behind branded pens, notebooks, and a voucher for a "sponsored dinner" where a presentation on their new antibiotic will be given. Several colleagues accept the dinner voucher. Is this a professionalism issue? What does the SCFHS Code of Ethics say? What are the risks, and how should you respond?

Case 3.3 — The Social Media Post

A physician posts on social media: "Third patient today who refused to vaccinate their child. Some people don't deserve to be parents." The post receives hundreds of shares. The physician is identifiable from their profile. (a) Is this a professionalism violation? (b) What are the specific concerns? (c) What should the physician do? (d) What should the hospital do if the post comes to their attention?

Case 3.4 — The Second Opinion Request

A patient asks for a second opinion because she is not satisfied with the diagnosis her previous physician gave her. When you review the case, you believe the previous physician made a significant diagnostic error that delayed treatment by six weeks. The previous physician is a senior colleague and well-respected in your department. How do you proceed? What are your obligations to the patient, to your colleague, and to the profession?

References

• ABIM Foundation, ACP-ASIM Foundation, & European Federation of Internal Medicine. (2002). Medical professionalism in the new millennium: A physician charter. Lancet.

• Al-Jarallah, J. (2021). Akhlaqiyyat al-tibb [Medical ethics] (أخلاقيات الطب).

• AMA. (2020). A guide to social media and medical professionalism.

Australian Medical Association. (2020). Guide to social media and medical professionalism. AMA.

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS.

• Levinson, W., Ginsburg, S., Hafferty, F. W., & Lucey, C. R. (2014). Understanding medical professionalism. McGraw-Hill.

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

Vukušić Rukavina, T., Viskić, J., Machala Poplašen, L., Relić, D., Marelić, M., Jokic, D., & Sedak, K. (2021). Dangers and benefits of social media on e-professionalism of health care professionals: Scoping review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(11), e25770. https://doi.org/10.2196/25770

PART TWO — THE DOCTOR–PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

Chapter 5: Patient Rights

Through most of medical history, the patient’s role was to obey. The good patient was compliant, trusting, and silent; the doctor decided, and the patient consented by not objecting. As late as the mid-twentieth century, hospitals rarely supposed that patients had “rights” at all. Then, in 1973 — driven by a rising tide of consumer and civil-rights activism — the American Hospital Association issued the first Patient’s Bill of Rights, declaring that patients were entitled to information, to respectful care, to refuse treatment, and to the truth about their condition. It was a quiet revolution: the patient had become a person with standing, not merely a body to be treated. This chapter sets out the rights that patients hold today, including under Saudi law.

5.1 Why Patient Rights Matter

For most of the history of medicine, the doctor decided and the patient complied. The physician's authority derived from expertise, and the patient's role was largely passive — to present symptoms, receive a diagnosis, and follow the prescribed treatment. This model was called medical paternalism, and it was widely accepted as both natural and benevolent.

The shift away from paternalism toward patient-centered care is one of the most significant ethical transformations in the history of medicine. It was driven by several forces: the western civil rights movement; the exposure of abuses in which patients were treated as subjects rather than persons; the growth of bioethics as an academic discipline; and the recognition that patients who are active participants in their care have better outcomes than those who are merely passive recipients of it.

Today, patient rights are enshrined in international declarations, national laws, hospital policies, and professional codes. In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Health's Patient Bill of Rights and Responsibilities gives legal force to these protections. Understanding these rights — not merely as abstract principles but as practical obligations that govern every clinical encounter — is a core competency for every physician.

5.2 Foundations of Patient Rights

Ethical Foundation

The ethical case for patient rights flows directly from the four principles. Autonomy holds that competent persons have the right to make decisions about their own bodies and lives — implying the right to information, the right to consent or refuse, and the right to have those decisions respected. Beneficence requires acting in the patient's best interest — but crucially, the patient's own conception of their best interest. Non-maleficence grounds the right to protection from harm. Justice grounds the right to equal and equitable access to care.

Legal Foundation

Internationally, patient rights are grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the World Medical Association Declaration on the Rights of the Patient (Lisbon, 1981; revised 2015). In Saudi Arabia, the MOH Patient Bill of Rights and Responsibilities provides the operative legal framework, covering rights at every stage of the healthcare encounter and specifying additional rights for vulnerable groups: children, the elderly, patients with disabilities, cancer patients, patients with HIV/AIDS, psychiatric patients, and women.

Islamic Foundation

Islam's contribution to patient rights is grounded in the Quranic principle of karama (كرامة) — the inherent dignity of every human being — and in the maqasid al-shari'ah. Patient rights are not, in the Islamic framework, concessions granted by the healthcare system; they are expressions of the Allah-given dignity that every human being possesses and that no institution has the authority to strip away.

5.3 The Saudi Patient Bill of Rights: Core Categories

Right to Dignity and Respect

Every patient has the right to be treated with respect for their human dignity, regardless of their medical condition, nationality, religion, age, gender, disability, or social status. In practice: use the patient's name and appropriate title; do not discuss patient information in corridors or in the presence of other patients; ensure privacy during examination and procedures; maintain respectful conduct even when a patient is unconscious, terminally ill, or cognitively impaired.

Patient rights in Saudi Arabia now include an enforceable right to data protection. The Personal Data Protection Law (Royal Decree M/19, in force since September 2023) classifies health information as sensitive personal data and requires a lawful basis and appropriate safeguards for its processing, giving the long-standing ethical duty to protect patient information a statutory foundation (Saudi Arabia, 2023).

Right to Information

Patients have the right to receive clear, accurate, and comprehensible information about their diagnosis, the proposed treatment plan (including benefits, risks, and alternatives), the likely prognosis with and without treatment, and the names and roles of healthcare providers involved in their care. Information must be communicated in language the patient can understand — this may require interpreters, simplified language, or visual aids.

Right to Informed Consent

No medical examination, investigation, or treatment may be performed without the patient's informed consent, except in defined emergency circumstances. The right to consent encompasses the right to accept a proposed treatment, the right to refuse, the right to withdraw consent at any time, and the right to consent to or refuse participation in clinical teaching or research.

Right to a Second Opinion and to Complaint

Patients have the right to seek a second medical opinion without this being interpreted as a challenge to their physician's authority. Every patient also has the right to raise a complaint about the care they receive, to have it investigated fairly and transparently, and to receive a response. In Saudi Arabia, the MOH operates a patient complaint system accessible via 937. A complaint is an important source of information about care quality — not a personal attack.

5.4 The Doctor-Patient Relationship

Trust as the Foundation

The doctor-patient relationship is built on trust. The patient trusts the physician to be competent, to tell the truth, to act in their interest, and to keep their confidences. This trust is not automatic; it must be earned through consistent professional behavior and sustained through honest, respectful communication.

The Problem of Paternalism

Medical paternalism — the practice of overriding patient preferences on the grounds of acting for the patient's own good — is ethically problematic when applied to competent adults, even when the physician's motives are benevolent. The paternalistic model assumes that the physician knows better than the patient what is good for the patient. This is partially correct — the physician has clinical expertise the patient lacks — but it ignores the equally important truth that the patient knows their own values, priorities, and life circumstances in ways the physician does not. Soft paternalism (overriding a decision that is not truly autonomous due to confusion, coercion, or inadequate information) is generally ethically justified. Hard paternalism (overriding a fully informed, competent patient's autonomous decision) is ethically indefensible.

5.5 The Four-Topic Framework for Clinical Ethics

The four-topic framework developed by Jonsen, Siegler, and Winslade in Clinical Ethics organizes ethical considerations in any clinical case into four domains. It is the most widely used systematic tool in clinical ethics worldwide.

Topic 1: Medical Indications

This covers the clinical facts: diagnosis, prognosis, and proposed treatment options. Relevant principles: beneficence and non-maleficence. Key questions: What is the patient's medical problem? What are the goals of treatment (cure, palliation, rehabilitation, comfort)? What are the benefits and harms of each treatment option? Is there a point at which further treatment is futile?

Topic 2: Patient Preferences

This covers the patient's values, wishes, and choices. Relevant principle: autonomy. Key questions: Has the patient been informed? Does the patient have capacity? What are their expressed preferences? Has the patient made advance directives? If lacking capacity, who is the appropriate surrogate decision-maker?

Topic 3: Quality of Life

This covers the patient's subjective experience. Relevant principles: beneficence and autonomy. Key questions: What are the prospects for returning to the patient's normal life? What burdens does the proposed treatment impose? How does the patient define quality of life for themselves? Physicians must guard against substituting their own QoL assessment for the patient's — studies consistently show patients with severe disabilities rate their QoL higher than physicians rate it for them.

Topic 4: Contextual Features

This covers broader circumstances: family dynamics, institutional factors, legal obligations, cultural context, financial pressures. Relevant principle: justice. Key questions: Are there family members whose interests bear on the decision? Are there institutional policies, legal requirements, or resource constraints that affect the options? Are there conflicts of interest?

5.6 Patient Responsibilities

Rights do not exist in isolation. The Saudi Patient Bill of Rights explicitly addresses the responsibilities that patients bear alongside their rights. Patient responsibilities include: providing accurate information about their medical history, symptoms, medications, and relevant lifestyle factors; following agreed treatment plans; treating healthcare staff with respect; and communicating honestly about limitations (financial, logistical, religious objections) so that alternative arrangements can be made.

It is important to note that patient responsibilities do not serve as justification for withholding care. A patient who behaves badly does not forfeit their right to treatment. The responsibilities are ethical obligations in a partnership, not conditions for access to healthcare.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 4.1 — The Protective Specialist

A 70-year-old man with newly diagnosed early Parkinson's disease is seen by a neurologist who decides not to mention a demanding but potentially beneficial clinical trial, reasoning that the patient "is elderly and would only be confused and distressed by too many options." The patient later learns of the trial from a support group and is angry that the choice was made for him. Was the neurologist's paternalism justified? Distinguish soft from hard paternalism in this case. What does respect for autonomy require when a physician believes a patient may struggle with a decision? (For the distinct problem of a family asking that a diagnosis be withheld, see Cases 6.4 and 7.1.)

Case 4.2 — The Refused Operation

A 35-year-old woman is admitted with post-partum hemorrhage. She is conscious and lucid. She tells you clearly: "I understand I may die. I do not consent to a surgery that may result in total hysterectomy under any circumstances." Her husband standing beside her begs you to operate on her regardless. What are the ethical issues? What does Islamic jurisprudence say? What should the clinical team do?

Case 4.3 — The Demanding Family

An 80-year-old man with advanced dementia is admitted with aspiration pneumonia. His three adult children disagree: one wants full aggressive treatment including ICU; one wants comfort care only; one is abroad and unreachable. The patient made no advance directive. Who is the appropriate decision-maker? How do you proceed?

Case 4.4 — The Complaint

A patient complains that during a ward round her diagnosis was discussed out loud in a four-bed bay while the curtains were open, and that the resident physician referred to her as "the diabetic in bed 3." The ward team dismisses the complaint as trivial. What rights has the patient identified as violated? What should happen next?

References

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences. (2004). Islamic charter of medical and health ethics.

• Jonsen, A. R., Siegler, M., & Winslade, W. J. (2022). Clinical ethics: A practical approach to ethical decisions in clinical medicine (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (n.d.). Patient bill of rights and responsibilities. https://www.moh.gov.sa

Saudi Arabia. (2023). Personal Data Protection Law (Royal Decree M/19 of 2021, as amended 2023). Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA).

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

• World Medical Association. (2015). Declaration on the rights of the patient (Revised 2015).

Chapter 6: Autonomy and Informed Consent

A woman named Mary Schloendorff agreed to let her doctors at a New York hospital examine a lump under anaesthesia — but she expressly forbade any operation. While she lay unconscious, the surgeon removed the tumour anyway. She developed gangrene, lost several fingers, and sued. In 1914, Judge Benjamin Cardozo answered with words that would anchor a century of medical ethics: “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient’s consent commits an assault.” The modern law of consent begins in that sentence. This chapter is about the patient’s right to choose.

6.1 The Centrality of Autonomy in Modern Medicine

Autonomy — from the Greek autos (self) and nomos (law) — means self-governance: the capacity and the right of a competent person to direct their own life according to their own values and choices. In clinical medicine, respecting autonomy means recognizing that the patient, not the physician, is the final authority on what happens to the patient's body.

In practice, autonomy is increasingly operationalised as shared decision-making — a collaborative process in which clinician and patient combine clinical evidence with the patient's values to reach a decision together. A systematic metasynthesis shows that genuine shared decision-making is demanding and easily eroded by time pressure, professional habit, and situations where real choice is limited, yet it remains the favoured model for preference-sensitive decisions (Rabben et al., 2024).

The landmark American legal case Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hospital (1914) first articulated the modern legal foundation: "Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his body." But it took decades of legal evolution, ethical argument, and documented abuses before this principle became routinely embedded in clinical practice. The concept of informed — as distinct from simple — consent emerged in the 1950s, when courts first required physicians to disclose material information about treatment risks.

6.2 The Three Elements of Valid Consent

Element 1: Adequate Information

The patient must receive sufficient information to make a meaningful decision. The Saudi Guidelines for Informed Consent (MOH, 2019) specify that this must include: the nature of the proposed procedure; its purpose and expected benefits; its material risks and potential complications; available alternatives including the option of no treatment; the likely consequences of refusing treatment; and the identity and qualifications of the person performing the procedure.

A risk is material if a reasonable patient would consider it significant in deciding whether to proceed — determined not by statistical probability alone, but by the patient's values and circumstances. The therapeutic privilege (withholding distressing information to prevent harm) has been progressively narrowed. While brief, carefully timed disclosure is appropriate, systematic withholding of material information is generally ethically indefensible.

Element 2: Understanding

Information received is not the same as information understood. The physician must not merely disclose but verify comprehension — using plain language free of jargon, visual aids where helpful, actively inviting questions, and using the teach-back method: asking the patient to explain in their own words what they have understood. Understanding is also affected by emotional state — a patient who has just been told they have cancer is in acute distress and may need staged disclosure.

Element 3: Voluntariness

Consent must be free from coercion, manipulation, and undue influence. Several situations commonly compromise voluntariness: implicit pressure from the physician (the way options are presented powerfully shapes patient choice); family pressure (particularly in Arab cultural contexts where families play an active role in health decisions); and institutional pressure (patients may feel they have no real choice without reassurance that their care will not change regardless of their decision).

6.3 Types of Consent

Express Consent

Written consent is required in Saudi Arabia per the MOH Guidelines for: surgical and invasive procedures; procedures with significant potential side effects; administration of blood and blood products; anesthesia; clinical research; and photography and recording of patients. A signature on a consent form is evidence that the consent process occurred — it is not the consent itself. A patient who signs without receiving or understanding the relevant information has not given valid informed consent.

Implied Consent

Implied consent arises from the patient's behavior — a patient who rolls up their sleeve when a nurse approaches with a blood pressure cuff is implying consent to the measurement. Implied consent is appropriate for routine, low-risk clinical interactions. It does not extend to invasive procedures, significant interventions, or any situation where there is reason to believe the patient might not agree if explicitly asked.

Emergency Consent and Proxy Consent

When a patient presents in an emergency and is unable to consent, treatment may proceed on the basis of presumed consent — it is assumed that a reasonable person would want life-threatening conditions treated. The Islamic Charter states: "A patient should not be examined or treated without his consent, except in cases when emergency medical intervention is required and informed consent cannot be obtained for any particular reason."

When a patient lacks capacity, consent must be obtained from an authorized representative. Saudi law and Islamic jurisprudence both recognize a hierarchy of guardianship (wilayah): the legal guardian (wali) for minors; next of kin for adult patients lacking capacity; and in genuine emergencies with no proxy available, the treating physician acting in the patient's best interest.

6.4 Assessing Capacity

Capacity is the clinical and legal prerequisite for self-consent. It is distinct from competence (a legal determination made by a court). Capacity is a clinical assessment made by the treating physician, and it is decision-specific and time-specific — a patient may have capacity for simple decisions but not complex ones, and may regain capacity after an acute confusional episode resolves.

The Four Components of Capacity

1. Understanding: Can the patient understand the information that has been given?

2. Appreciation: Can the patient appreciate how this information applies to their own situation?

3. Reasoning: Can the patient reason about the options and arrive at a decision through a coherent rational process?

4. Communication: Can the patient communicate their decision in some form?

The threshold for capacity is appropriately calibrated to the stakes of the decision — a higher level of decision-making ability is required to refuse life-saving treatment than to accept a low-risk investigation. Formal capacity assessment is indicated when the patient is refusing significantly beneficial treatment, when cognitive impairment may be affecting decision-making, or when the consequences of the decision are severe or irreversible.

6.5 The Islamic Framework for Consent

The concept of informed consent in Islamic jurisprudence predates its formalization in Western medical law by centuries. Classical Islamic legal scholars discussed the conditions under which medical treatment could be administered. Al-idhn al-tibbi (الإذن الطبي — medical permission) is the Islamic concept that corresponds to informed consent. Treatment is permissible when: the patient has given permission (idhn); the physician is qualified (khibra); the treatment is likely to benefit the patient (ghalab al-zann bi-l-shifa'); and the expected benefit outweighs the anticipated harm.

The Islamic concept of shura (consultation) supports the shared decision-making model: the ideal clinical encounter is one in which the physician provides expert guidance and the patient (and their family, where appropriate) makes an informed choice. Neither pure paternalism nor pure patient autonomy captures this ideal — the Islamic model is one of collaborative deliberation grounded in mutual trust and transparency.

6.6 Refusal of Treatment

The right to refuse medical treatment is the logical corollary of the right to consent. Competent adults have the right to refuse any treatment, for any reason, as long as the decision does not harm third parties. When a patient refuses significantly beneficial treatment, the physician's obligations include: ensuring the refusal is informed (has the patient understood the consequences?); exploring the reasons (a refusal that seems irrational often reflects a fear, a misunderstanding, or a value that, when understood, changes the clinical picture); offering alternatives; documenting the process; and ultimately accepting the decision.

Islamic jurisprudence does not require a patient to seek or accept treatment in all circumstances. The obligation to treat (wujub al-tadawi) is generally classified as recommended (mustahabb) rather than obligatory (wajib), except where failure to treat would constitute self-harm through neglect. A competent adult Muslim who, after genuine deliberation, declines a treatment is not violating their religious obligations — though physicians may appropriately engage patients in reflection about the implications of their decision.

6.7 Advance Directives

An advance directive is a document in which a competent person specifies their wishes regarding future medical care, to take effect if they later lose capacity. Common forms include living wills (specifying treatment preferences), DNR orders, and durable power of attorney for healthcare (appointing a specific person to make healthcare decisions). Advance directives extend autonomy into a future period when the patient can no longer exercise it directly. In clinical practice, they should be documented clearly in the medical record, reviewed periodically, and respected by the clinical team even when the team disagrees with the patient's stated preferences.

For Postgraduate Trainees — consent in your hands: As a junior doctor you will often be the one obtaining consent. Consent is valid only if the person taking it understands the procedure, its risks, benefits, and alternatives well enough to answer the patient's questions. Do not take consent for an operation or intervention you cannot explain — that is 'borrowed' consent, and it is ethically and legally unsound. When a patient asks something you cannot answer, or declines, escalate to the responsible senior rather than persuading or proceeding.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 5.1 — The Pre-operative Consent

A 55-year-old woman requires a colonoscopy for investigation of rectal bleeding. She is seen in the pre-admission clinic on the morning of surgery, already in a hospital gown. The surgical resident hands her a consent form and says: "Just sign here — it's routine, nothing to worry about." She asks about risks and receives the reply: "Very small — just the usual surgical risks." She signs. Has valid informed consent been obtained? What are the ethical failures? What should the endoscopy team do?

Case 5.2 — The Refusing Patient

A 40-year-old woman with newly diagnosed breast cancer refuses the recommended mastectomy: "I would rather die than lose my breast." Her husband is distraught and urges you to operate without her consent. How do you assess her capacity? What are your obligations to her? To her husband? Can you operate without consent?

Case 5.3 — The Unconscious Patient

A 30-year-old man is brought to the emergency department unconscious following a road traffic accident. He requires emergency surgery to control intra-abdominal bleeding. His family has not yet arrived. Among his belongings is a handwritten, signed, and dated note stating that for personal religious reasons he does not consent to blood transfusions and requests that only blood-free alternatives be used. The surgeon estimates that without transfusion, the risk of intraoperative death rises from 5% to 40%. What is the ethical framework for this decision? How does the Islamic principle of necessity (darurah) apply when a patient's pre-stated refusal conflicts with preservation of life? What should the surgical team do?

Case 5.4 — The Teenage Refusal

A 15-year-old girl is admitted with a serious eating disorder. Her weight is critically low and she requires nasogastric feeding. She refuses: "It is my body and my choice." Her parents consent to the tube feeding. What is the ethical framework? Does her age matter? Does her capacity matter? Who has the authority to make this decision?

References

• Appelbaum, P. S. (2007). Assessment of patients' competence to consent to treatment. New England Journal of Medicine, 357(18), 1834–1840. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMcp074045

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. (Chapter 4)

• Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences. (2004). Islamic charter of medical and health ethics. (Article 14)

• Jonsen, A. R., Siegler, M., & Winslade, W. J. (2022). Clinical ethics (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill. (Topic Two: Preferences of Patients)

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (2019). Saudi guidelines for informed consent (1st ed.).

• Rabben, J., Vivat, B., Fossum, M., & Rohde, G. E. (2024). Shared decision-making in palliative cancer care: A systematic review and metasynthesis. Palliative Medicine, 38(4), 406–422. https://doi.org/10.1177/02692163241238384

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

Chapter 7: Privacy and Confidentiality

In 1969, a young man told his university psychologist that he intended to kill a woman who had rejected him. The therapist was alarmed but, believing himself bound by confidentiality, warned no one beyond a brief and failed attempt to have the man detained. Two months later he killed her. Her parents sued, and in 1976 the California Supreme Court delivered a principle that reshaped medical confidentiality: “the protective privilege ends where the public peril begins.” A clinician’s duty of secrecy, the court held, is not absolute — it yields when an identifiable life is at stake. This chapter examines the strong duty to keep patients’ confidences, and the narrow but serious exceptions that can require breaking them.

7.1 The Circle of Confidence

Imagine a circle drawn around a physician and a patient at the moment of consultation. Inside that circle flows information that the patient would share with almost no one else: symptoms they are ashamed of, behaviors they have hidden from their family, fears they cannot name, secrets that have shaped their life. The patient shares these things not because they trust this particular individual as a person — they may have met minutes before — but because they trust the role. They trust that what enters the circle stays within it.

This is the foundation of medical confidentiality. It is not a bureaucratic rule, a legal technicality, or a courtesy. It is the condition that makes the doctor-patient relationship possible. Without the assurance of confidentiality, patients would withhold exactly the information that physicians most need.

7.2 Definitions: Privacy, Confidentiality, and Secrecy

Privacy is the broader concept: the right of a person to control access to information about themselves. In healthcare, privacy has both a physical dimension (the right to bodily privacy during examination) and an informational dimension (the right to control who knows what about one's health).

Confidentiality is a specific application of the privacy principle to information disclosed within a relationship of trust. It refers to the obligation of the person who receives private information — the physician — to use it only for the purpose for which it was disclosed and not to share it without the patient's consent. Confidentiality is relational: it arises because of the relationship, and it is the physician's obligation, not merely an option. Secrecy is the simple act of keeping information hidden — broader and more passive than confidentiality.

7.3 Ethical and Islamic Foundations

The Hippocratic Oath (Edelstein translation, 1943) states: "What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about." The WMA Code gives the contemporary formulation: "It is ethical to disclose confidential information when the patient consents or when there is a real and imminent threat of harm that can only be removed by breach of confidentiality."

The Islamic ethical framework provides a robust foundation. The Quran explicitly prohibits spying: "Do not spy on one another." (Al-Hujurat 49:12). The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Whoever conceals [the faults of] a Muslim in this world, Allah will conceal his faults on the Day of Resurrection." (Muslim). The concept of amanah (أمانة — trust) is central: when a patient discloses information to a physician, they are placing a trust in their hands. Betraying that trust is not merely a professional failing; in Islamic ethics it is a moral failing of the gravest kind.

Three overlapping ethical values ground confidentiality: autonomy (personal information belongs to the patient; sharing it without authorization violates their right of control); respect for dignity (confidentiality protects a person from having their medical history define them socially); and trust (without confidentiality, patients will not disclose fully, and medicine practiced without complete information is both less effective and more dangerous).

7.4 Confidentiality in Practice

Ward Rounds and Teaching Sessions

The traditional medical ward round is an inherently privacy-compromising activity — a patient's diagnosis, test results, social history, and treatment plan may be audible to every other patient in the bay. The ethical obligation is to minimize this exposure: drawing curtains, speaking quietly, conducting sensitive discussions in a private room, and ensuring teaching at the bedside is conducted with the patient's explicit consent. A patient who consented to admission has not automatically consented to being a teaching case.

Medical Records and Documentation

The medical record is a confidential document. Access should be restricted to those involved in the patient's care. Unauthorized access — looking up a record out of curiosity, reviewing a colleague's or family member's record without clinical justification — is a serious breach of confidentiality even if the information is never shared further. In Saudi Arabia, the Executive Regulations of the Health Professions Practice Law require healthcare practitioners to maintain the confidentiality of patient records and to use patient information only for the purposes of their care.

Casual Conversation

Discussing patient cases in elevators, hospital canteens, corridors, or social settings — even without using the patient's name — constitutes a confidentiality breach if enough identifying information is included. The rule is simple and absolute: patient information is for clinical purposes only, and clinical discussion belongs in clinical spaces.

7.5 Exceptions to Confidentiality

Patient Consent

The clearest exception is when the patient consents to disclosure. Consent to disclosure should be explicit where possible, documented, and limited to the specific information and recipient authorized.

Duty to Protect Third Parties

The most significant exception is the obligation to breach confidentiality when a patient poses a clear, serious, and imminent risk to an identifiable third party. The foundational legal case is Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California (1976): "The protective privilege ends where the public peril begins." Application requires that the threat is serious, credible, imminent; that disclosure is necessary and no less privacy-invasive alternative can prevent the harm; and that disclosure is proportionate.

Compulsory Notification and Court Orders

Certain diseases are subject to mandatory notification requirements: the physician is legally obliged to report them to the appropriate public health authority regardless of patient consent. Saudi Arabia's MOH regulations specify a list of notifiable diseases including tuberculosis, meningococcal disease, and cholera. A physician may also be required by a court order to disclose confidential patient information in legal proceedings — a legal compulsion that overrides the ethical obligation of confidentiality.

7.6 The Family, Culture, and Confidentiality

In many Arab and Muslim cultural contexts, the family plays a central and active role in healthcare. This cultural reality does not alter the fundamental ethical principle: the right to confidentiality belongs to the patient, not to the family. The family's love, concern, and emotional investment do not entitle them to information the patient has not authorized them to receive.

A specific and ethically charged scenario: the family's request that the physician not disclose a serious diagnosis (most commonly cancer) to the patient. The ethical problems are several: it violates patient autonomy; it is usually based on a false premise (research consistently shows most patients want to know their diagnosis); it damages trust when the patient eventually learns they were deceived; and it impedes appropriate care. The culturally sensitive path involves meeting with the family first, acknowledging their concern, then assessing the patient's own preferences privately, and disclosing at the patient's pace.

7.7 Confidentiality in the Digital Age

Electronic Health Records

Electronic health records create new confidentiality vulnerabilities: the same accessibility that benefits clinical care means a single security breach can expose thousands of patients' records simultaneously. Obligations include: accessing only the records of patients under your care; using only authorized, secure platforms; logging out of systems when not in use; reporting unauthorized access or security breaches immediately; and never photographing or screenshotting patient records.

Confidentiality in the digital age now also has a statutory backbone. Saudi Arabia's Personal Data Protection Law (Royal Decree M/19, in force since September 2023) treats health data as sensitive personal data, restricts its processing and transfer, and requires safeguards and breach accountability — so a confidentiality lapse may now carry legal as well as ethical consequences (Saudi Arabia, 2023).

Messaging Applications: WhatsApp and Clinical Communication

The use of consumer messaging applications — particularly WhatsApp — for clinical communication is widespread but ethically problematic. These platforms are stored on personal devices that may be lost, stolen, or accessed by others. Group chats routinely include forwarding of patient information and clinical photographs, often without patient consent. The ethical framework: patient information should be transmitted only through approved, encrypted, institutionally governed platforms. Where clinical necessity requires unofficial platforms, information should be maximally anonymized and explicit patient consent obtained for identifying clinical images.

For Postgraduate Trainees — confidentiality on the ward: The most common breaches happen in plain sight — corridor handovers, lifts, shared workrooms, and messaging apps used to discuss patients. Never put identifiable patient data into a personal WhatsApp, and never photograph a chart or scan on your own phone. Use only approved hospital systems, share information strictly on a need-to-know basis within the treating team, and remember that the confidentiality undertaking you sign at the start of internship or residency is a binding professional commitment, not a formality.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 6.1 — The WhatsApp Ward Round

A junior doctor photographs the chest X-ray of a patient with an unusual finding and shares it on the department WhatsApp group, which includes twelve colleagues. The image includes the patient's name, hospital number, and date of birth visible in the corner. The patient later complains that they did not consent to this. The doctor argues that the purpose was educational and no harm was caused. Evaluate the ethical issues. What should happen next?

Case 6.2 — The Concerned Employer

A 35-year-old bus driver is diagnosed with epilepsy. He is started on medication and counseled that he must not drive until he has been seizure-free for one year. Two weeks later he calls to say he is still driving — he cannot afford to lose his job. His employer calls the hospital asking for information about why the driver has been absent. What are your obligations? To the patient? To the employer? To the public?

Case 6.3 — The Spouse's Request

A 40-year-old woman attends a gynaecology outpatient clinic and is found to have a sexually transmitted infection. Her husband is in the waiting room and approaches the nurse, asking what the problem is. The patient had made no mention of her husband during the consultation. How should the nurse respond? What should happen next in the patient's care?

Case 6.4 — The Family Veto

The family of a 62-year-old man newly diagnosed with advanced colon cancer begs you: "Do not tell him. He has a heart condition. The shock will kill him." The patient has not been informed of the reason for his investigation. When you enter the room alone with him, he says: "Doctor, I need you to be straight with me. What did you find?" How do you proceed? What ethical principles apply?

References

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. (Chapter 8)

• Lee, A., & Wu, H. Y. (2002). Diagnosis disclosure in cancer patients — when the family says "No!" Singapore Medical Journal, 43(10), 533–538.

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (1426H). Executive regulations of the health professions practice law (Royal Decree M/59).

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (n.d.). Patient bill of rights and responsibilities.

• Moskop, J. C., Marco, C. A., Larkin, G. L., et al. (2005). From Hippocrates to HIPAA: Privacy and confidentiality in emergency medicine. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 45(1), 53–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2004.08.008

Saudi Arabia. (2023). Personal Data Protection Law (Royal Decree M/19 of 2021, as amended 2023). Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA).

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

Chapter 8: Truth-Telling and Communication

In 1961, a researcher asked American physicians a simple question: would you tell a patient he had cancer? Ninety percent said no — convinced that the truth would crush hope and do more harm than good, so the diagnosis was buried in euphemism and silence. Eighteen years later, researchers put the very same question to a new generation of doctors. This time, ninety-seven percent said yes. In under two decades the profession had completely reversed one of its most basic habits — and what had changed was not the disease, but the ethics of honesty. This chapter asks what we owe our patients in the way of truth, and how to tell it.

8.1 The Moral Weight of a Word

What is said to patients — and what is withheld — is not merely a communication style preference. It is a moral act. Words open or close possibilities: the possibility of decision-making, of preparation, of reconciliation, of dignity in facing illness. Silence, euphemism, and deliberate deception do not protect patients from suffering; they relocate that suffering, often making it worse, and they do so at the cost of the patient's autonomy and the physician's integrity.

8.2 The Ethical Obligation to Tell the Truth

In deontological ethics, Kant argued that lying is intrinsically wrong because it treats the person being deceived as a means to an end. A patient who is deceived about their diagnosis is not being protected; they are being denied the right to be an agent in their own life. In virtue ethics, honesty is a core medical virtue. The physician who tells the truth even when it is difficult exercises the virtue of courage. In consequentialist terms, the evidence strongly supports truthful disclosure: patients who are honestly informed cope better, engage more constructively with treatment, and do not die sooner. The fear that "the truth will kill them" is not supported by research.

Islam places truthfulness (sidq, صدق) among the most fundamental moral obligations. The Quran commands: "O you who believe! Be mindful of Allah, and be with the truthful." (Al-Tawbah 9:119). The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Truthfulness leads to righteousness, and righteousness leads to Paradise." (Bukhari and Muslim). In the medical context, the obligation of truthfulness is grounded in the concept of amanah — the patient who asks their physician about their condition has placed a trust in them, and that trust is betrayed by deception.

8.3 What Truth-Telling Requires in Practice

Completeness Without Overwhelm

The patient has a right to complete information, but that information need not be delivered all at once. For patients with serious diagnoses, a staged approach — providing the most important information first, then allowing time for questions, then returning to fill in details — is both ethically sound and clinically effective.

Truthfulness Within Uncertainty

Medicine involves uncertainty, and honest communication must acknowledge it. Saying "your prognosis is six months" when the honest answer is "most patients with this condition survive between three and twelve months, but individual variation is significant" is a form of false precision that can cause as much distress as underdisclosure.

The Right Not to Know

Autonomy includes the right not to receive information. A patient who says "I don't want the details — I trust you to decide" is exercising a legitimate autonomous choice. This preference should be documented, and its limits clarified: the patient may not want diagnostic details but may need information about treatment in order to consent to it.

8.4 Breaking Bad News: The SPIKES Protocol

Breaking bad news is among the most demanding communication tasks in medicine. The SPIKES protocol — developed by Buckman and Baile — provides a structured framework validated across multiple clinical contexts.

Table 7.1 — The SPIKES Protocol for Breaking Bad News

Communication of this kind is a learned skill, not an inborn trait. Surveys of clinicians and trainees consistently identify the main barriers as time pressure, clinical uncertainty, and existing patient and family assumptions, and find that structured training with observed practice — rather than online modules alone — is what builds competence (Knox et al., 2024).

S — Setting Up the Interview

Arrange a private room; close the door. Ensure the patient is comfortable and clothed. Sit down — sitting at eye level signals that you are present and not rushing. Minimize interruptions. Ask the patient if they would like someone with them — but ensure the patient themselves makes this choice.

P — Assessing the Patient's Perception

Before disclosing, establish what the patient already knows or suspects. Ask: "What have you been told about your condition so far?" A patient who says "I think it might be cancer" requires a different opening than a patient who says "I just thought it was a routine check-up."

I — Obtaining the Patient's Invitation

Before disclosing, explicitly check how the patient wants to receive information. Ask: "Some patients want all the details about their diagnosis, and others prefer to take it step by step. What would work best for you?" This operationalizes the right not to know while ensuring that patients who want information receive it fully.

P — Giving Knowledge and Information

Use a warning shot: "I'm afraid I have some serious news to share with you." Use plain language — "tumor" rather than "malignant neoplasm." Deliver information in manageable pieces; pause after each. Do not fill silence — the patient needs a moment to register what they have been told. Do not give false hope.

E — Addressing Emotions with Empathy

Use the NURSE framework for empathic responses: Naming ("It sounds like you are feeling overwhelmed"); Understanding ("This makes complete sense given what you have just been told"); Respecting ("You have handled an incredibly difficult situation with remarkable courage"); Supporting ("I want you to know that we are going to be with you through this"); Exploring ("Can you tell me more about what you are most worried about?").

S — Strategy and Summary

The consultation should not end with the disclosure alone. The patient needs a clear sense of what happens next: investigations planned, who will be involved in their care, when the next appointment will be, who they can call. A written summary of key information given to the patient at the end is extremely valuable — patients in acute distress retain very little of what they are told verbally.

8.5 Disclosure in the Saudi and Arab Clinical Context

Saudi oncologist Aljubran (2013) notes that attitudes toward disclosure in the Arab world have been changing significantly, driven by increased patient education, greater awareness of patient rights, and recognition that non-disclosure causes harm. Surveys of Saudi cancer patients consistently show that the majority want to know their diagnosis — including terminal diagnoses — when asked directly and without family pressure.

Cultural Sensitivity vs. Cultural Capitulation

Respecting cultural context means adapting the how of disclosure — the timing, the pace, the language, the role of the family — not the whether. The obligation to disclose is not culturally relative; what is culturally variable is the style in which disclosure is most effectively and compassionately conducted. The assumption that "Arab patients don't want to know" is a stereotype that harms patients by denying them the opportunity to express their actual preferences.

The Role of Hope

The cultural resistance to disclosure often stems from a genuine belief that removing hope is harmful. This concern deserves serious engagement. The physician can and should communicate hope — but hope that is grounded in reality: hope for effective symptom control, hope for meaningful time, hope for dignity, hope for the support of the healthcare team. False hope is not compassion; it is a deception that forecloses the real preparation and reconciliation that honest knowledge enables.

8.6 Managing Disagreement

Physician-Patient Disagreement

When a patient's choice conflicts with the physician's clinical recommendation, the starting point is genuine curiosity: why does the patient see things differently? The disagreement may reflect a difference in values, a misunderstanding, a fear, or a practical barrier — each calling for a different response. The physician's role is to understand the patient's reasoning, address modifiable barriers, ensure the patient is fully informed, and ultimately accept a competent patient's autonomous decision even when the physician disagrees.

Intra-professional Conflict

Disagreements within the clinical team require structured, respectful communication. The SBAR framework (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) provides a structured approach to clinical escalation equally applicable to ethical concerns. When a trainee observes conduct they believe is ethically problematic, the appropriate response is structured escalation through legitimate channels — the clinical supervisor, the training program director, or the hospital ethics committee.

8.7 Cultural, Gender, and Religious Sensitivity

Cultural sensitivity is not stereotyping patients by national origin; it is remaining genuinely curious about the individual patient's values and preferences. In the Saudi clinical context, relevant cultural dimensions include the importance of family involvement in healthcare decisions; the significance of religious faith in making sense of illness; norms around gender and physical examination; and communication styles that may be more indirect or hierarchical than those familiar from Western medical education.

For Muslim patients, religious faith is often the primary framework through which illness is understood and interpreted — through the lens of sabr (patient endurance), tawakkul (trust in Allah), and the conviction that suffering carries spiritual meaning and reward. The physician who engages with this dimension — who acknowledges the patient's faith, who does not pathologize religious responses to illness, who involves the hospital chaplain where appropriate — is practicing medicine that is holistic in the fullest sense.

For Postgraduate Trainees — who breaks the news: Breaking significant news is usually a senior responsibility. As a junior you may be present, may be asked to support the patient and family afterward, and should know the SPIKES structure — but you should not deliver a new cancer diagnosis or a death disclosure alone, or by phone, unless you are competent and it has been agreed with your senior. Recognising the limits of your role here is itself a mark of professionalism; when in doubt, involve the responsible physician.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 7.1 — The Son's Request

You are seeing a 67-year-old man with newly diagnosed metastatic colon cancer. His son meets you before the consultation and asks you not to tell his father the diagnosis. You respectfully explain the ethical framework and your obligation to your patient. You enter the room alone. Within the first two minutes, the patient looks at you and says: "Doctor, my son told me this morning that I have cancer. I know what is happening. I just need you to tell me the truth about how long I have." Walk through how you would approach the rest of this consultation using SPIKES.

Case 7.2 — The Prognosis Question

A 55-year-old woman with advanced ovarian cancer, receiving palliative chemotherapy for eight months, asks you directly: "Am I going to die from this?" The treatment has not been working and her last scan showed significant progression. Her performance status is declining. How do you respond? Is it ever acceptable to say "I don't know" in this context? How do you balance honesty with the maintenance of appropriate hope?

Case 7.3 — The Disagreeing Resident

During a ward round, you observe the attending physician tell a patient with a new diagnosis of type 2 diabetes that their condition is "just a bit of sugar in the blood — nothing serious." You know this significantly understates the condition and its complications. The patient has not been counseled about lifestyle modification, medication, or the risk of end-organ damage. After the round, what do you do? Who do you speak to? What do you say?

Case 7.4 — The Physician Patient

A 42-year-old man is admitted for investigation of weight loss and is found to have inoperable pancreatic cancer. He is a physician himself and asks you to "give it to him straight — all of it, including the prognosis statistics." His wife, present in the room, begins to cry and shakes her head at you. How do you navigate between the patient's explicit request and his wife's visible distress?

References

• Aljubran, A. H. (2013). Challenges to the disclosure of bad news to cancer patients in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia as an example. In A. Surbone et al. (Eds.), New challenges in communication with cancer patients. Springer. (Chapter 12)

• Baile, W. F., Buckman, R., Lenzi, R., et al. (2000). SPIKES — a six-step protocol for delivering bad news. The Oncologist, 5(4), 302–311. https://doi.org/10.1634/theoncologist.5-4-302

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. (Chapter 8)

Knox, M. C., Naehrig, D., & Chin, Y. S. (2024). Communication and collaboration skills training in radiation oncology: A quantitative validation survey. Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Oncology, 68(5), 586–594. https://doi.org/10.1111/1754-9485.13722

• Lee, A., & Wu, H. Y. (2002). Diagnosis disclosure in cancer patients — when the family says "No!" Singapore Medical Journal, 43(10), 533–538.

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

• World Medical Association. (2015). Medical ethics manual (3rd ed.). WMA. (Chapter Two: Physicians and Patients)

PART THREE — SPECIAL CLINICAL TOPICS

Chapter 9: Women's Health and Reproductive Ethics

Shortly before midnight on 25 July 1978, in a hospital in the north of England, a baby girl named Louise Brown was born. She looked entirely ordinary — and she changed the world. Louise was the first human being conceived outside the body, through in-vitro fertilisation, after years of work by Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe. Her birth was met with wonder and with alarm: religious leaders, scientists, and ethicists asked whether a sacred boundary had been crossed, and what it meant to create life in glass. Those questions — about the status of the embryo, the limits of reproductive technology, and the meaning of parenthood — are still debated. This chapter takes them up, including from within the Islamic tradition.

9.1 Why Reproductive Ethics Demands Special Attention

Reproductive medicine occupies a uniquely sensitive position in clinical ethics. It deals simultaneously with the most intimate aspects of human life — sexuality, fertility, pregnancy, birth — and with some of the most contested questions in moral philosophy: when does life begin? Who has the right to make decisions about reproduction? What obligations do we owe to future persons who do not yet exist?

For Muslim physicians practicing in Saudi Arabia, these questions have an additional dimension: Islamic jurisprudence has developed highly refined positions on many reproductive ethics issues, positions that are both internally sophisticated and sometimes at variance with secular bioethical frameworks. Navigating this terrain requires fluency in both frameworks.

9.2 The Moral and Legal Status of the Embryo and Fetus

The Islamic Framework: Stages of Fetal Development

Islamic jurisprudence does not treat fetal moral status as binary. Rather, classical scholars articulated a developmental framework rooted in Quranic and Prophetic sources. The most important reference is the hadith reported in Bukhari and Muslim: "Each of you is constituted in your mother's womb for forty days as a nutfah (drop), then it becomes an 'alaqah (clot) for a similar period, then a mudghah (morsel of flesh) for a similar period, after which the angel is sent and breathes the ruh (soul) into it."

Based on this, classical scholars identified a critical threshold at 120 days after conception — the moment of nafkh al-ruh (نفخ الروح — the breathing of the soul). Before this point, the fetus has life (hayah) but not the full status of a person with an ensouled existence. After this point, the fetus is treated for most legal purposes as a person, and termination becomes categorically prohibited except to save the mother's life. Some Hanafi scholars distinguished a secondary threshold at 40 days, holding that restrictions before 40 days are less stringent.

Table 8.1 — Stages of Fetal Development in Islamic Jurisprudence

9.3 Abortion: The Islamic Jurisprudential Framework

Before 40 Days

The majority of Hanafi scholars and a significant minority in other schools permit termination before 40 days if there is a valid reason ('udhr). This includes: serious medical risk to the mother; confirmed severe fetal abnormality incompatible with life; pregnancy resulting from rape (accepted by many contemporary scholars); and significant hardship meeting the jurisprudential threshold. The Maliki school is stricter, generally prohibiting abortion from the moment of conception except in cases of necessity.

Between 40 and 120 Days

Between 40 and 120 days, termination is permissible only for more serious reasons: confirmed severe fetal abnormality incompatible with life or associated with severe suffering; serious threat to maternal health that substantially worsens with the continuation of pregnancy; or pregnancy from rape (accepted by many contemporary scholars as a valid basis for termination up to 120 days).

After 120 Days (Ensoulment)

After ensoulment, the fetus is treated as a person with full legal protection. Termination is prohibited except when the mother's life is in direct, immediate danger from the continuation of the pregnancy, and there is no alternative means of saving her. The principle of tarjih al-maslaha al-ra'jiha (preferring the greater interest) applies: the certain, present life of the mother takes precedence over the potential future life of the fetus.

9.4 Assisted Reproductive Technologies

IVF: The Basic Framework

The dominant scholarly consensus — endorsed by the Islamic Fiqh Council of the OIC — permits IVF under the following conditions: the egg and sperm must come from the legally married couple; the embryo must be transferred to the wife's uterus; the procedure is carried out only for medically indicated infertility; and excess embryos are handled with appropriate care.

Third-Party Reproduction: Sperm Donation, Egg Donation, and Surrogacy

The introduction of a third party's genetic material is prohibited under the dominant scholarly consensus in Islam. The reasons are grounded in the imperative to preserve lineage (nasl — one of the five maqasid): donor sperm from a man outside the marriage introduces a child whose biological paternity differs from their legal paternity — a confusion of lineage (ikhtilat al-ansab) that Islamic law regards as a serious harm to the child and to the social order. Surrogacy is similarly prohibited.

A note on intra-Islamic divergence: the prohibition described here reflects the dominant Sunni position and the operative Saudi legal framework — codified internationally in the International Islamic Fiqh Academy's Resolution 16 (4/3) of 1986, which permits in vitro fertilization only between husband and wife and prohibits any third-party gamete donation or surrogacy. A minority of Shia (Ja'fari) jurists have, under specific conditions, permitted certain third-party arrangements. This book follows the operative Saudi (Sunni) position, but trainees should be aware that "the Islamic view" on this question is not monolithic — as is also true for brain death (§10.4).

Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)

Islamic scholars have generally permitted PGD for: serious genetic diseases that cause significant suffering; conditions incompatible with life; and sex-linked disorders where only male embryos carry the disease. PGD for sex selection for non-medical reasons is more contested; many scholars prohibit it as a form of selective discrimination against embryos on the basis of sex.

A newer and more contested development is polygenic embryo screening (PGT-P), which uses polygenic risk scores to rank IVF embryos not only for disease risk but potentially for non-disease traits such as height or intelligence. Although PGT-P involves no modification of the genome, a jurisprudential analysis grounded in the five maxims of Islamic law (qawa'id fiqhiyyah) concludes that selecting embryos for socially desirable, non-disease traits conflicts with the spirit of the Shariah, and contemporary scholars have called for a specific fatwa on the technology (Chin et al., 2023).

9.5 Contraception

The ethics of contraception is significantly less contested in Islamic jurisprudence than abortion or ART. The classical position, based on the practice of 'azl (عزل — coitus interruptus), is that contraception is generally permissible within marriage, for legitimate reasons, with the agreement of both spouses.

Contemporary Islamic scholarly consensus generally permits barrier methods, hormonal contraception, IUDs, and emergency contraception (before confirmed implantation). Permanent contraception — vasectomy and tubal ligation — is generally prohibited (haram) in the absence of medical necessity, on the grounds that it permanently eliminates a Allah-given function and forecloses future reproduction. Exceptions are recognized when pregnancy would pose a serious, documented threat to the woman's life or health.

9.6 Prenatal and Postnatal Screening

The Ethics of Prenatal Screening

Prenatal screening programs raise ethical issues that intersect the Islamic framework on fetal status with questions of autonomy, disability rights, and obligations to future children. Women must have genuinely informed, non-directive counseling before and after prenatal testing. The purpose is to inform the woman's own decision-making — not to direct her toward termination. The right not to know must be respected — a woman who, after full information, declines a screening test is exercising a legitimate autonomous choice.

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), which analyses cell-free fetal DNA in maternal blood, has rapidly become a first-line screen for common aneuploidies such as trisomy 21 and is expanding to wider panels; its accuracy and freedom from miscarriage risk are major advantages, but commercial expansion without proportionate regulation makes pre- and post-test genetic counselling essential (Abedalthagafi et al., 2023). A central ethical concern is routinization — the risk that an easy blood test becomes a default rather than a genuinely informed choice; comparative work across health systems shows that a routine offer is not inherently problematic provided each woman's free and informed decision remains the objective (Rehmann-Sutter et al., 2023).

Genetic Counseling and Consanguineous Marriage

Saudi Arabia has among the highest rates of consanguineous (first-cousin) marriage in the world, which elevates the prevalence of autosomal recessive conditions. Preconception genetic counseling for consanguineous couples is an important clinical service carrying significant ethical obligations around non-directiveness, cultural sensitivity, and respect for autonomous reproductive choices. A specific challenge: if one partner has genetic test results relevant to the other partner's reproductive decisions but does not consent to disclosure, the physician faces a tension between the confidentiality owed to one patient and the potential harm to the other. Saudi Arabia's national premarital screening and counselling programme (the Healthy Marriage Program) screens close to a million people a year — more than 916,000 in the Riyadh region alone in 2021–2022 — detecting carriers of sickle cell disease and β-thalassaemia alongside transmissible infections (Al Zuayr et al., 2024). Yet awareness studies show many couples still misunderstand what the screen can and cannot tell them, and consanguineous-marriage rates remain high, underscoring the counselling obligations of non-directiveness and informed reproductive choice (Al Eissa et al., 2024).

9.7 Maternal-Fetal Conflict

When a pregnant woman's autonomous choices conflict with the welfare of the fetus, the ethical framework is clear on one dimension: the pregnant woman is a patient with full moral and legal rights. Her autonomous decisions about her body and her pregnancy must be respected. In secular law the fetus does not have full legal personhood before birth, and the physician cannot treat it as a second patient whose rights automatically override the mother's autonomy. This secular-legal point must, however, be read alongside the Islamic framework set out in §§8.2–8.3: after ensoulment at 120 days the fetus acquires protected moral status — its wrongful loss incurs the ghurra (a compensatory diya) — so late maternal–fetal conflict is governed by that graduated status rather than by a simple 'no personhood until birth' rule.

The appropriate clinical response to a woman making choices the physician believes may harm the fetus is: ensure she is fully informed of the risks; explore the reasons for her choices (which often reflect fear, practical barriers, or misunderstanding); engage with religious and cultural frameworks; accept her decision while maintaining the therapeutic relationship; and never coerce, deceive, or threaten the patient into compliance.

9.8 Sexually Transmitted Infections: Ethical Dimensions

Islam regards sexual virtue ('iffah) as a fundamental value, but the clinical obligation is the same regardless of the circumstances of acquisition: the patient with an STI is entitled to full, non-judgmental care, confidentiality, and honest information. Key ethical issues include partner notification (encouraging the patient to notify their partner and facilitating this through counseling); non-judgmental care (moral judgment about behavior has no place in clinical care); and confidentiality — the physician's role is to counsel strongly in favor of disclosure while maintaining the patient's confidentiality pending their own decision.

For Postgraduate Trainees — reproductive decisions on the ward: As an obstetrics-and-gynaecology trainee you are often the first to counsel a woman facing termination, sterilisation, or a fetal-anomaly diagnosis. Confirm gestational age and the documented indication, present options non-directively, and never let a spouse's or family's wishes override a competent woman's own decision. Decisions touching the 120-day threshold, sterilisation, or termination must be escalated to the responsible consultant and, where required, a hospital ethics or fatwa committee — never acted on alone.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 8.1 — The Fetal Anomaly

A 30-year-old woman at 18 weeks gestation is told that her fetus has been diagnosed with anencephaly — a condition incompatible with survival after birth. She and her husband are devout Muslims and request guidance on whether termination is permissible. How do you counsel them? What are the relevant Islamic jurisprudential considerations? What is the role of gestational age in this case?

Case 8.2 — The Infertility Consultation

A married couple presents to a fertility clinic. The husband's sperm analysis shows azoospermia. The wife's investigations are normal. The fertility specialist informs them that IVF with donor sperm would give them an excellent chance of pregnancy. The husband asks you privately whether this is permitted in Islam. How do you respond?

Case 8.3 — The Sterilization Request

A 38-year-old woman with five children, whose last delivery was complicated by severe postpartum hemorrhage requiring massive blood transfusion, presents requesting tubal ligation before her sixth pregnancy. Her husband opposes the procedure on religious grounds. She states clearly: "I nearly died last time. I want this operation." What are the ethical issues? Who has the authority to make this decision?

Case 8.4 — The Positive STI Test

A 32-year-old married man is diagnosed with gonorrhoea at a sexual health clinic. He discloses that he has had a sexual encounter outside his marriage and is terrified his wife will find out. He refuses to notify her. His wife is also your patient and is due for a routine check-up next week. What are your ethical and clinical obligations?

References

Abedalthagafi, M., Bawazeer, S., Fawaz, R. I., Heritage, A. M., Alajaji, N. M., & Faqeih, E. (2023). Non-invasive prenatal testing: A revolutionary journey in prenatal testing. Frontiers in Medicine, 10, 1265090. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2023.1265090

Al Eissa, M. M., Almsned, F., Alkharji, R. R., Aldossary, Y. M., AlQurashi, R., Hawsa, E. A., … Assiri, A. M. (2024). The perception of genetic diseases and premarital screening tests in the central region of Saudi Arabia. BMC Public Health, 24, 1556. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19029-0

Al Zuayr, S. N., Sulimani, S. M., & Abd-Ellatif, E. E. (2024). Outcomes of the premarital screening program in Riyadh Region, KSA in 2021–2022: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences, 19(5), 1067–1074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtumed.2024.10.007

• Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer.

• Al-Jarallah, J. (2021). Akhlaqiyyat al-tibb [Medical ethics] (أخلاقيات الطب).

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chin, A. H. B., Al-Balas, Q., Ahmad, M. F., Alsomali, N., & Ghaly, M. (2023). Islamic perspectives on polygenic testing and selection of IVF embryos (PGT-P) for optimal intelligence and other non-disease-related socially desirable traits. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 21(3), 441–448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-023-10293-0

International Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC). (1986). Resolution 16 (4/3): In vitro fertilization and test-tube babies (3rd Session, Amman).

• Islamic Fiqh Council, Muslim World League. (n.d.). Rulings on assisted reproduction and abortion [Collected resolutions]. Islamic Fiqh Council, Muslim World League.

• Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences (IOMS). (2004). Islamic charter of medical and health ethics.

• Jonsen, A. R., Siegler, M., & Winslade, W. J. (2022). Clinical ethics (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Rehmann-Sutter, C., Timmermans, D. R. M., & Raz, A. (2023). Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT): Is routinization problematic? BMC Medical Ethics, 24, 87. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-023-00970-5

Chapter 10: Surgical Ethics

During the First World War, a new weapon — high-velocity shrapnel — returned thousands of young soldiers from the trenches with their faces torn away. A surgeon named Harold Gillies set out to rebuild them, founding at a hospital near London the modern art of reconstructive surgery, operating not to save life but to restore identity and dignity. From the same techniques would later grow cosmetic surgery — the reshaping of healthy bodies for the sake of appearance. That lineage poses the central question of surgical ethics: when is it right to take a knife to a person who is not sick? This chapter examines consent, necessity, and the difference between healing the body and altering it.

10.1 Surgery as an Ethical Act

Surgery is among the most morally loaded acts in medicine. In no other clinical domain does the physician so directly and irreversibly alter the patient's body. The patient, rendered unconscious and entirely vulnerable, can neither consent nor withdraw consent in the operating theatre. The outcomes — when things go well — can be transformative. When things go wrong, the harm may be permanent. These features give surgical practice a distinctive ethical weight.

From the standpoint of both ethics and Islamic law, surgery represents one of the most significant forms of bodily intervention. The human body is described in the Quran as an amanah (trust) from Allah. Classical Islamic scholars classified surgery as permissible — indeed obligatory in cases of necessity — because the higher objective of preserving life (hifz al-nafs) overrides the general prohibition on bodily harm. But this permissibility is conditional: the intervention must be necessary, conducted with skill, and oriented toward the patient's genuine welfare.

10.2 Informed Consent for Surgery: Specific Obligations

Scope of Disclosure

For surgical procedures, the Saudi Guidelines for Informed Consent require that patients be informed of: the nature of the procedure and what it involves anatomically; its intended benefits and the probability of achieving them; all material risks — including rare but serious risks such as nerve damage, major hemorrhage, anaesthetic death, and organ injury; alternative treatments including non-surgical management and watchful waiting; the consequences of declining surgery; and what will happen during and after the procedure including recovery time.

Beyond consent, surgical ethics is reinforced by systems designed to prevent harm. The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, now used worldwide, has been shown in a meta-analysis of systematic reviews to reduce mortality, surgical-site infection, and other complications when used as intended — a concrete expression of the duty of non-maleficence in the operating room (Sotto et al., 2021).

Timing and Context of Consent

Surgical consent must be obtained before the patient enters the operative environment — not in the anaesthetic room, not while the patient is already sedated. The practice of obtaining consent on the morning of surgery while the patient is already in a hospital gown represents procedural compliance while violating the ethical substance of consent. Genuine consent requires time for reflection and questions.

The Intra-operative Discovery

A surgeon who discovers unexpected pathology during an operation faces a specific ethical dilemma: address it now, or close and discuss with the awake patient? The general ethical principle is that the surgeon's authority extends to what was consented to, not to what turns out to be discoverable. Urgent life-threatening conditions found intra-operatively may justify emergency treatment; non-urgent findings should wait for patient discussion.

Consent and the Surgical Trainee

The patient who consents to surgery has the right to know who will perform the operation. The practice of obtaining consent for a procedure that will in fact be performed in whole or in part by a trainee, without the patient's specific knowledge, is ethically problematic. Patients should be told when trainees will be involved and to what degree, and should have the opportunity to decline.

10.3 Cosmetic Surgery: Ethical Foundations

Cosmetic surgery — surgery performed primarily to alter appearance rather than to treat disease or restore function — presents ethical questions that do not arise in the same form in therapeutic surgery. The fundamental question is: is it ethically legitimate to subject a patient to the risks of surgery when there is no disease to treat?

From a secular autonomy-based perspective, the ethical case is straightforward: competent adults have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, and if they judge that altering their appearance will enhance their quality of life, their autonomous choice should be respected. Many cosmetic procedures genuinely improve patients' psychological wellbeing: rhinoplasty for a person who has experienced lifelong self-consciousness, breast reconstruction after mastectomy, scar revision after disfiguring injury.

10.4 The Islamic Framework: Fitrah and the Body

Islamic jurisprudence engages with cosmetic surgery through the concept of fitrah (فطرة). Fitrah refers to the natural disposition with which Allah has created human beings. The Quran states: "So set your face toward the religion of pure natural disposition — the fitrah of Allah upon which He created people." (Al-Rum 30:30). The Prophet (peace be upon him) cursed those who perform tattoos, remove eyebrow hair for beautification, file teeth for aesthetic purposes, and alter the body for beauty — taghyir khalq Allah (changing Allah's creation). This hadith, recorded in Bukhari and Muslim, forms the scriptural basis for restrictions on elective cosmetic modification.

10.5 The Islamic Classification of Cosmetic Procedures

Category 1: Medically or Functionally Indicated — Permitted

Procedures that restore normal function, correct genuine deformity, or relieve demonstrable suffering are permitted — and in some cases obligatory — in Islamic jurisprudence. Examples include: reconstructive surgery (repair of cleft palate, correction of deformities from burns or accidents, reconstruction after cancer surgery); functional restoration (procedures that restore sight, hearing, mobility); correction of congenital abnormalities causing functional impairment; and rhinoplasty for breathing obstruction. Islamic scholars have also recognized the psychological dimension of wellbeing: a disfigurement causing genuine, significant psychological suffering may justify corrective surgery even when physical function is intact.

Category 2: Pure Beautification Without Medical Need — Prohibited

Procedures motivated solely by a desire to enhance beauty or conform to cultural standards of attractiveness are, in the view of most scholars, prohibited as taghyir khalq Allah. Examples include: rhinoplasty for purely cosmetic reasons in a person with normal nasal function; lip augmentation and cheek fillers; elective breast augmentation (distinguished from breast reconstruction); and surgical removal of healthy tissue for aesthetic purposes. The underlying principle is not hostility to beauty — Islam celebrates beauty and permits adornment (zeenat) within defined limits — it is the distinction between enhancing what Allah has given versus altering it out of dissatisfaction with divine creation.

10.6 Body Dysmorphic Disorder and the Ethics of Cosmetic Surgery

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a psychiatric condition in which a person has an obsessive preoccupation with a perceived flaw in their appearance that is absent or barely noticeable to others. Studies suggest that between 5% and 15% of patients presenting for cosmetic surgery have BDD. Surgery does not improve BDD — patients typically shift their obsession to a different body part or develop new concerns.

The ethical obligations of the cosmetic surgeon include: screening for BDD before any procedure using validated tools; declining to operate when BDD is identified regardless of the patient's insistence (this is not a violation of autonomy but a recognition that surgery will cause harm rather than benefit); and referring to psychiatric care when psychological rather than surgical treatment is indicated.

10.7 Gender Reassignment Surgery: Ethical and Islamic Analysis

The Islamic Jurisprudential Position

Islamic jurisprudence draws a critical distinction between two scenarios. For intersex conditions (khuntha, خنثى) — a person born with ambiguous biological sex characteristics — Islamic scholars permit medical treatment including surgery to clarify and establish a clear biological sex. This is viewed not as taghyir khalq Allah but as correction of an ambiguity in the original creation, aimed at establishing the person in one of the two Allah-ordained sexes.

For transsexualism (psychological gender dysphoria in a person with unambiguous biological sex), the dominant scholarly consensus in Sunni Islam prohibits gender reassignment surgery. The reasoning is grounded in: the human body being created by Allah with a specific known biological sex; the concept of fitrah including one's biological sex as part of natural constitution; and the maqasid al-shari'ah not including accommodation of subjective identity at the cost of irreversible physical alteration. GRS is not legally available in Saudi Arabia in the transsexualism context.

A note on intra-Islamic divergence: the prohibition stated here is the dominant Sunni consensus and the operative position in Saudi Arabia. It is not universal across the Islamic world: some Shia (Ja'fari) authorities — following a well-known 1980s ruling by Ayatollah Khomeini — permit gender-reassignment surgery for a person with a firmly established diagnosis of gender dysphoria, treating it as the correction of a recognised condition rather than an alteration of healthy creation. This book follows the operative Saudi position while noting the divergence, exactly as it does for brain death in §10.4.

The Physician's Ethical Obligations

The Muslim physician encountering a patient requesting GRS must: provide non-abandonment (compassionate, non-judgmental clinical care regardless of personal position); engage honestly with the patient about the Islamic scholarly position and the legal context; ensure comprehensive psychological assessment and support; and refer to appropriate psychiatric and multidisciplinary care, not simply dismiss the patient.

For Postgraduate Trainees — 'see one, do one' has limits: Training requires graded responsibility, but a patient's safety is never subordinate to your learning. Perform a procedure only when you are competent or appropriately supervised, answer honestly if a patient asks who will be doing what, and stop and call for help when a case exceeds your competence. Logging a procedure you did not adequately perform, or letting a patient assume the consultant will operate when a trainee will, are integrity failures as much as technical ones.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 9.1 — Whose Hands? (Consent and the Operating Surgeon)

A 45-year-old woman is consented in clinic for an elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy by her consultant, who reassures her that she will "be well looked after." On the day, after she is anaesthetised, the consultant supervises while a surgical resident — performing several key steps unassisted for the first time — carries out most of the operation. The patient was never told that a trainee would operate. The surgery is uncomplicated. Was her consent valid? What does honest consent require regarding the identity and experience of the operating surgeon? How should graded surgical responsibility (essential for training the next generation) be reconciled with patient autonomy and the duty of non-deception?

Case 9.2 — The Rhinoplasty Request

A 22-year-old woman presents to a cosmetic surgery clinic requesting rhinoplasty. She has no nasal obstruction and her nose is within normal anatomical variation. She has felt self-conscious about her nose since childhood, has researched the procedure extensively, has realistic expectations, and understands all risks. She is clearly competent and freely choosing. How do you apply the Islamic framework? Does the secular autonomy argument override Islamic restrictions? How do you counsel her?

Case 9.3 — The Intra-operative Finding

A 55-year-old man consents to a laparoscopic appendicectomy. During the operation, the surgeon notices an incidental finding: a mass on the right colon that looks suspicious for carcinoma. The appendicectomy is complete. Should the surgeon proceed to biopsy the mass now, or close and discuss with the patient? What does informed consent doctrine require?

Case 9.4 — The Gender Dysphoria Presentation

A 25-year-old biologically male patient presents in significant distress, describing long-standing gender dysphoria and requesting referral for gender reassignment surgery. The attending physician is a devout Muslim with sincere personal and religious objections to GRS. What are the physician's ethical obligations in this consultation? What must they not do? What must they do?

References

• Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer.

• Al-Jarallah, J. (2021). Akhlaqiyyat al-tibb [Medical ethics] (أخلاقيات الطب).

• Islamic Fiqh Council, Muslim World League. (n.d.). Rulings on cosmetic and reconstructive surgery [Collected resolutions]. Islamic Fiqh Council, Muslim World League.

• Jonsen, A. R., Siegler, M., & Winslade, W. J. (2022). Clinical ethics (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill. (Topic One: Medical Indications)

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (2019). Saudi guidelines for informed consent.

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

Sotto, K. T., Burian, B. K., & Brindle, M. E. (2021). Impact of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist relative to its design and intended use: A systematic review and meta-meta-analysis. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 233(6), 794–809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2021.08.692

• World Health Organization. (2009). WHO surgical safety checklist. WHO.

Chapter 11: End-of-Life Care and Elderly Patients

In 1975, a twenty-one-year-old woman named Karen Ann Quinlan stopped breathing for long enough to leave her in a permanent coma, kept alive on a mechanical ventilator. Her parents, convinced she would never recover, asked the doctors to switch it off. The doctors refused, fearing prosecution. The case reached the New Jersey Supreme Court, which in 1976 ruled that the family could withdraw the ventilator — one of the first times a court recognised a right to let a patient die. (Remarkably, once weaned, Karen breathed on her own and lived nine more years.) This chapter confronts the hardest questions in medicine: when treatment should stop, and who decides.

11.1 The Ethics of Dying

Death is not a medical failure; it is a biological certainty. The physician's obligation at the end of life is not to prevent death indefinitely but to ensure that the dying patient receives care that is compassionate, dignified, and consistent with their values; that suffering is minimized; and that the patient and their family are supported through one of the most profound experiences in human life.

The Islamic tradition approaches death not as a failure but as a transition — the return of the soul to its Creator, the culmination of earthly life. The Quran states: "Every soul shall taste death." (Al-Imran 3:185). This universal truth frames the Islamic approach to end-of-life care: neither life should be prolonged beyond its natural course by extraordinary means, nor death hastened. The physician's role is to accompany the dying patient with compassion, to relieve suffering, and to facilitate a death that honors the patient's dignity and faith.

11.2 Palliative Care: The Ethical Foundation

Palliative care is the active, total care of patients whose disease is no longer responsive to curative treatment. The WHO (2002) defines it as "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing problems associated with life-threatening illness, through prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual."

Palliative care is not the withdrawal of medicine; it is the redirection of medicine. The shift from curative to palliative intent does not mean abandoning the patient; it means reorienting the goals of care from cure to comfort, from length of life to quality of life. Palliative care attends to the whole person — not only physical symptoms but psychological distress, social needs, and spiritual concerns.

The Doctrine of Double Effect

This doctrine holds that an action with both a good effect and a harmful side effect is morally permissible if: the action itself is not inherently wrong; the good effect is genuinely intended; the harmful effect is not the means to the good effect; and the good effect proportionately outweighs the harmful effect. In palliative care, this justifies adequate doses of opioids for pain control even in the theoretical scenario where they might hasten death — the physician's intention is pain relief; death, if it occurred, would be an unintended side effect. This principle is accepted in both secular ethics and Islamic jurisprudence.

11.3 Quality of Life vs. Sanctity of Life

The sanctity of life position holds that human life must be preserved under all conditions — evaluations of quality of life are irrelevant. Its secular counterpart — vitalism — holds that organic life must be preserved even when all distinctly human functions are lost. The quality of life position holds that the goal of medicine is not mere biological survival but a life characterized by function, consciousness, relationship, and the fulfillment of personal values.

The Islamic framework does not endorse either extreme. Islam affirms the sanctity of human life (hifz al-nafs) but does not endorse vitalism. Classical Islamic scholars distinguished between al-'ilaj al-wajib (obligatory treatment, required when it offers genuine prospect of benefit) and al-'ilaj al-ja'iz (permissible but not obligatory treatment). Life-prolonging treatment that only prolongs suffering without hope of recovery falls outside the category of obligatory care. The Islamic Fiqh Council has affirmed that it is permissible to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment when three specialist physicians agree the condition is beyond cure and treatment merely prolongs the dying process without benefit to the patient.

11.4 Brain Death: Medical Definition and Islamic Ruling

Brain death is defined as the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem. It is characterized by: absent brainstem reflexes; apnoea (inability to breathe without mechanical ventilation); and irreversibility confirmed by the absence of any known reversible cause. A patient who meets clinical criteria for brain death is biologically dead — the brain has permanently ceased to function. The continued movement of blood and breath in a brain-dead patient on a ventilator is a product of the machine, not of life.

Internationally, the World Brain Death Project — a consensus statement endorsed by major critical-care, neurology, and neurosurgery societies — has defined the minimum clinical standards for determining death by neurologic criteria (established coma, brain-stem areflexia, and apnoea), with the explicit aim of reducing variation within and between countries (Greer et al., 2020); subsequent work has continued to refine determination, documentation, and the handling of religious objections to the examination (Lewis, 2024).

The dominant scholarly position — affirmed by the Islamic Fiqh Council of the Muslim World League, the OIC Fiqh Academy, and the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars — holds that brain death constitutes legal death in Islamic jurisprudence. The brain is the seat of consciousness, perception, and voluntary function — the faculties most distinctly human. Brainstem function is the ultimate regulator of autonomous life; its permanent cessation is equivalent to the irreversible departure of the capacity for life. On the basis of this ruling, a brain-dead patient may have life support withdrawn, may be declared dead for legal purposes, and may have their organs donated. A minority of scholars disagree, maintaining that death is established only by cessation of heartbeat and breathing.

11.5 Withholding and Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Treatment

Withholding treatment means deciding not to initiate an intervention. Withdrawing treatment means stopping an intervention that has been started. The dominant ethical position — and the position of most professional bodies and Islamic scholars — is that withholding and withdrawing are morally equivalent when the clinical circumstances are the same. Recognizing this equivalence supports rather than undermines appropriate clinical trial of treatment: if physicians believe starting a treatment creates an irreversible obligation to continue it, they will be less willing to initiate trials of potentially beneficial treatment.

Medical Futility

Medical futility refers to treatment that cannot achieve its intended clinical goal. Two forms: quantitative futility (extremely low probability of achieving the goal — CPR in metastatic cancer with multi-organ failure approaches zero survival-to-discharge); and qualitative futility (treatment achieves its physiological goal but provides no quality of benefit that makes it worthwhile from the patient's perspective). Futility determination should involve the multidisciplinary team, clear documentation, communication with the patient and family, and ethics committee involvement when there is disagreement.

11.6 DNR Orders and Advance Directives

A DNR (Do-Not-Resuscitate) order is a clinical instruction that CPR should not be attempted if the patient suffers a cardiac arrest. It is not an instruction to reduce the quality of care in any other way. The Islamic position supports DNR orders when CPR is clearly futile — when it cannot restore life but only prolongs the dying process. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Make use of medical treatment, for Allah has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it." (Abu Dawud). This establishes the obligation to seek treatment — but treatment, not futile intervention.

In the end-of-life setting, advance directives are especially valuable: they should be discussed with patients who have serious or progressive illness before the point of crisis, not at the moment of acute deterioration. (Their general definition, common forms, and documentation requirements are set out in §5.7.) Where a patient's directive is known and applies to the situation at hand, it should guide care even when the team would have chosen differently.

11.7 Euthanasia: The Islamic Prohibition

The Islamic scholarly consensus on euthanasia is effectively unanimous across the Sunni and Shia schools: both active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are prohibited (haram), regardless of the patient's consent, the degree of suffering, or the apparent hopelessness of the prognosis. The reasoning rests on: the sanctity of life (the Quran states: "Do not kill yourselves — indeed Allah is to you ever Merciful." Al-Nisa 4:29); the prohibition on despair of Allah's mercy (qunoot); the sufficiency of palliative care (Islam does not require the prolongation of suffering — it provides a full toolkit of legitimate end-of-life care, making euthanasia ethically unnecessary); and the physician's role (to heal, to relieve suffering, and to accompany the dying — not to kill).

The Muslim physician who encounters a patient requesting euthanasia must: acknowledge the patient's suffering with genuine compassion; explore what is driving the request (inadequately controlled pain, fear, depression, social isolation, spiritual distress — each is addressable); ensure comprehensive palliative care is in place; offer spiritual support; clearly explain the Islamic position without judgment; and not abandon the patient because of the request.

11.8 Care of the Dying Patient and Death Certification

Adequate management of pain, dyspnea, nausea, and psychological distress is both a clinical obligation and an ethical imperative. The physician who allows a dying patient to suffer from controllable symptoms has failed in their most fundamental obligation. The dying patient deserves honest, compassionate communication about their prognosis, their options, and what they can expect. The temptation to maintain false hope — "we'll keep trying" when curative treatment is exhausted — deprives the patient of the opportunity to complete unfinished business, make peace, say what needs to be said, and engage in spiritual preparation.

Islam places great emphasis on preparation for death. The talqeen (تلقين — prompting the dying person to say the Shahada) is a Sunnah practice; the presence of family reciting Quran, particularly Surah Yasin, is widely practiced. Death certification must accurately record the cause of death — falsification of a death certificate, whether to conceal a medical error or for any other reason, is a serious criminal offence and a profound ethical violation. The human body retains dignity after death and should be treated with respect.

11.9 Ethics of Elderly Care

Ageism — discrimination or bias based on age — is documented in healthcare settings and affects clinical decision-making in ways that harm elderly patients. Studies show that elderly patients are less likely to receive certain investigations, less likely to be referred for surgical interventions, and more likely to have DNR orders placed without adequate discussion, compared to younger patients with equivalent clinical profiles. The ethical obligation: each patient's clinical circumstances and personal values must be assessed individually. Age alone is not a basis for limiting care.

When capacity is absent, the surrogate decision-making framework applies. For elderly patients who have lived long, value-rich lives, the emphasis should be on substituted judgment — deciding as the patient would decide, based on their known values and preferences. Elder abuse — physical, psychological, financial — is a significant clinical and ethical concern. The physician's obligations include documenting clinical findings carefully, speaking with the patient privately without the suspected abuser, and reporting concerns to the appropriate authorities.

For Postgraduate Trainees — end-of-life decisions are senior decisions: Confirm a patient's resuscitation (DNR) status on admission rather than discovering it during an arrest, but do not write, change, or rescind a DNR order, or begin withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, on your own authority — these require the responsible consultant. As a junior you may support the family, ensure comfort and analgesia, and arrange spiritual care; when family conflict or a withdrawal request arises, escalate promptly and document it. Brain-death declaration follows a defined protocol and is never a solo trainee task.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 10.1 — The Ventilator Decision

An 82-year-old man with end-stage COPD and heart failure is admitted in acute respiratory failure. He is hypoxic and confused. His daughter, who holds power of attorney for health decisions, says her father "always said he never wanted to be on machines." No written advance directive exists. The medical team believes without intubation he is likely to die within hours, but even with intubation his prognosis is extremely poor. How do you proceed? What ethical frameworks apply? What role does the daughter's account play?

Case 10.2 — The DNR Conflict

A 55-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer has a DNR order documented after a conversation with the patient, who agreed. Her husband arrives and demands the order be removed: "I don't accept this. We are Muslims — Allah gives life and only Allah takes it. You must do everything." How do you respond to the husband? What are the ethical obligations? What does the Islamic framework say about the patient's own expressed wish?

Case 10.3 — The Euthanasia Request

A 45-year-old man with inoperable pancreatic cancer is in severe pain despite current analgesia. He says: "Doctor, I can't live like this. Please end it for me. I've heard this is available in other countries." You are a Muslim physician in Saudi Arabia. How do you respond? What specific steps do you take? What does compassionate, ethically grounded care look like in this moment?

Case 10.4 — The Brain-Dead Patient

A 28-year-old man is brought to the emergency department following a severe road traffic accident. Over 48 hours, all clinical tests confirm brain death. His family refuses to accept the diagnosis: "As long as the heart is beating, he is alive. You cannot remove the machine." How do you engage with the family? What does the dominant Islamic scholarly position say? How do you balance respect for the family's distress with your clinical and ethical obligations?

References

• Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer.

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. (Chapter 5)

Greer, D. M., Shemie, S. D., Lewis, A., Torrance, S., Varelas, P., Goldenberg, F. D., … Sung, G. (2020). Determination of brain death/death by neurologic criteria: The World Brain Death Project. JAMA, 324(11), 1078–1097. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.11586

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Module 9)

International Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC). (1986). Resolution 17 (5/3): Resuscitation equipment and the signs of death (3rd Session, Amman).

• Islamic Fiqh Council, Muslim World League. (n.d.). Rulings on brain death, withdrawal of life support, and euthanasia.

• Jonsen, A. R., Siegler, M., & Winslade, W. J. (2022). Clinical ethics (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill. (Topic Three: Quality of Life)

Lewis, A. (2024). An update on brain death/death by neurologic criteria since the World Brain Death Project. Seminars in Neurology, 44(3), 236–262. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0044-1786020

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

• World Health Organization. (2020). Palliative care (WHO Fact Sheet).

• World Medical Association. (2019). Declaration on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. WMA.

Chapter 12: Organ Donation and Transplantation Ethics

On a December day in 1954, in a Boston hospital, a surgeon named Joseph Murray did something that had never before succeeded: he removed a healthy kidney from one young man and placed it into the body of his dying identical twin. The transplant worked, and the recipient lived for years. But it forced a question medicine had never had to face: is it right to perform a major operation on a perfectly healthy person — to wound him — purely for the benefit of someone else? Every act of living donation since has rested on the answer. This chapter examines the ethics of giving and receiving organs, including the rulings of Islamic jurisprudence on donation and on the definition of death.

12.1 The Organ Shortage: A Permanent Ethical Crisis

Every day, patients die waiting for an organ transplant that never arrives. The gap between patients on transplant waiting lists and available organs is one of the most persistent ethical shortages in modern medicine. In Saudi Arabia, as across most of the Arab world, the transplantation rate from deceased donors remains significantly lower than clinical need — a disparity driven by infrastructure limitations, workforce constraints, legal frameworks, cultural attitudes, and, in some cases, misunderstanding of the Islamic position on donation.

This shortage is not merely a logistical problem. It is an ethical emergency: a predictable, preventable injustice in which people die from organ failure not because no treatment exists, but because the social, institutional, and cultural conditions required to make that treatment available have not been adequately established.

In Saudi Arabia the gap is compounded by low donor registration. The Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT) coordinates donation nationally, and registration is now possible through national digital platforms such as Tawakkalna; yet a 2023 national survey found that although 87% of respondents considered organ donation important, only about 21% had registered as deceased donors, and barely half were aware of the Islamic fatwa permitting it — a gap driven more by limited awareness of SCOT and of the religious rulings than by opposition in principle (Alhasan et al., 2023). Fear of the unknown and a lack of knowledge remain the leading reported barriers, so public-awareness work that foregrounds the religious authorization is an ethical priority, not merely a logistical one (Alaamri et al., 2024).

12.2 Types of Organ Donation

Living Donor Transplantation

Living donation involves the voluntary donation of an organ or part of an organ by a living person. The kidneys (one of two) and partial liver are the most commonly transplanted organs from living donors. Related living donation (a family member donating to a relative) is the most common form and the least ethically contested, provided donation is genuinely voluntary. Unrelated living donation raises more complex questions about motivation, voluntariness, and the risk of subtle coercion. Paired exchange programs allow incompatible donor-recipient pairs to exchange donors to achieve compatible transplants, significantly increasing the number of living donor transplants.

Deceased Donor Transplantation

Donation after Brain Death (DBD): The body remains on ventilatory support until organs are retrieved after confirmed brain death. This is the major source of deceased donor organs. Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD): Organs are retrieved after cessation of cardiorespiratory function, following a decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment. DCD is more complex ethically because of the proximity between the decision to withdraw treatment and organ retrieval — a separation that must be scrupulously maintained to prevent any conflict of interest.

12.3 The Islamic Framework for Organ Donation

The Islamic case for organ donation rests on one of the most powerful moral principles in the Quran: "Whoever saves the life of one person, it is as if he has saved the life of all mankind." (Al-Ma'idah 5:32). The Islamic principle of maslaha (المصلحة — public interest or benefit) further supports organ donation: when the benefit to society is clear and substantial, actions that might otherwise be restricted become permissible.

The Saudi Grand Ulama Fatwa (1982)

Fatwa No. 99 of the Council of Senior Scholars, issued in 1982, unanimously sanctioned autografts; sanctioned by majority donation of organs by living donors; and sanctioned by majority donation of organs from the deceased, either through the donor's prior testament or through the consent of relatives. This fatwa established the Islamic legitimacy of organ donation in Saudi Arabia.

Conditions for Permissibility

Islamic scholarly consensus identifies the following conditions: no harm to the donor that outweighs the benefit to the recipient; genuine voluntariness without coercion; no commercialization (the organ must not be sold — organ sale is categorically prohibited as it violates the dignity of the human person); confirmed death of the deceased donor; and medical necessity (transplantation as the treatment of last resort).

Organs That May Not Be Donated

Reproductive organs (gonads – ovaries and testes) — prohibited because donation would transfer reproductive capacity and create confusion of lineage. Organs from living donors that would cause the donor's death — a living person may not donate their heart or both kidneys (this would constitute suicide). Organs procured through wrongdoing — organs obtained through murder, coercion, or trafficking are categorically prohibited.

12.4 Ethics of Living Donor Transplantation

Living donor transplantation involves deliberately subjecting a healthy person to surgical risk for the benefit of another — an ethically unusual act. The justification lies in the autonomy of the donor (who freely chooses to accept risk for an altruistic purpose) and the magnitude of benefit to the recipient. The ethical acceptability therefore depends entirely on the quality of the consent process and the genuine voluntariness of the donation.

Voluntariness and Family Pressure

In close-knit Arab family cultures, a relative with organ failure creates an implicit pressure on family members to offer donation. The family member who does not offer may feel they are letting the patient down. This pressure may never be expressed explicitly — it operates entirely through guilt and expectation. The clinical team's obligation is to create a protected space in which the potential donor's genuine wishes can be explored away from family dynamics. The assessment process must include consultation with the donor alone, without the recipient present; explicit exploration of whether the offer is freely chosen; clear communication that declining is entirely acceptable; a genuine opt-out pathway; and psychological assessment.

Medical Risks to the Living Donor

Living kidney donation carries a small but real long-term risk — approximately 0.3% absolute lifetime increase in the risk of end-stage renal disease — alongside the immediate surgical risks of donor nephrectomy (approximately 0.03% mortality). These risks must be fully disclosed. The principle of non-maleficence requires that the medical team advocates for the donor's welfare, not only the recipient's. A donor who is medically suboptimal should not be approved for donation even if they are willing and the recipient is in urgent need.

Consents for Minors and Those Without Decision-Making Capacity

Donating an organ: A person must be at least 18 years old and have the capacity to make their own decision before they can consent to living organ donation. Parents or guardians cannot consent to organ donation on behalf of a child or a person who lacks decision-making capacity, because donation is not considered part of that person's own medical treatment. One exception is bone marrow or stem cell donation between siblings, when the recipient is expected to benefit and the risk to the donor is minimal. If a child dies and organ donation is being considered, the parents or legal guardians may provide consent.

Receiving an organ: Receiving a transplant is considered a medical treatment. Therefore, if a patient cannot make their own medical decisions, a parent or legal guardian may give consent on their behalf because transplantation is in their best interest.

12.5 Ethics of Deceased Donor Transplantation

The Dead Donor Rule

The dead donor rule is the foundational ethical principle of deceased donor transplantation: vital organs may only be retrieved after the donor is dead, and the retrieval itself must not cause the donor's death. This maintains the absolute prohibition on killing one person to save another — a prohibition grounded in both secular ethics and Islamic jurisprudence.

The Separation of Death Determination and Donation

A critical structural requirement of the transplantation system is that the clinical team responsible for declaring a patient brain dead must be completely independent of the transplantation team. This prevents any conflict of interest — the possibility that a patient might be declared dead prematurely in order to facilitate organ retrieval.

Supporting Families in the Donation Conversation

The conversation asking a family to consider organ donation from their brain-dead relative is among the most delicate in clinical medicine. It occurs at a moment of acute grief. Best practice: separate the notification of death from the donation request; use a trained donation coordinator; provide honest, accurate information about brain death and the donation process; acknowledge the family's grief and their right to say no without judgment; present donation as a meaningful gift — a final act of generosity by their loved one; and involve an Islamic scholar or chaplain if the family wishes religious guidance.

Registration as an Organ Donor:

Saudi Arabia operates an opt-in system administered by the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT). Individuals can register their wish to donate through the Athar platform (athar.scot.gov.sa) or the Tawakkalna application. Registration is voluntary and records the individual's preference for donation upon death.

However, registration alone is not sufficient to authorize organ retrieval. Under SCOT regulations, the written consent of the legal heirs (الورثة الشرعيون) must be obtained at the time of death, unless the deceased had made a formal legal will (wasiya — وصية) during their lifetime explicitly consenting to donation. This means that a registered donor's organs cannot be retrieved if the family refuses, unless a wasiya exists. For unregistered donors, the family's written consent is the sole pathway to donation.

12.6 Organ Allocation: The Justice Dimension

Allocation systems aim to balance: medical urgency (patients who will die soonest without transplantation); probability of benefit (patients most likely to survive and benefit); waiting time (first-come, first-served principles); and compatibility (biological compatibility directly affects transplant success). What must not drive allocation: ability to pay; social worth judgments; racial or ethnic discrimination; and corruption or favoritism.

12.7 Organ Trafficking

Organ trafficking — the illegal commercial trade in organs — is prohibited for multiple reasons: it exploits the poor (organ sellers are almost invariably in financial desperation — their "consent" is not genuinely autonomous); it violates human dignity (the human body is not a commodity — treating organs as products to be bought and sold reduces the human person to a collection of spare parts, violating the Islamic principle of karama); it produces poor outcomes for both donors and recipients; and it undermines the altruistic donation system.

The Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism (2008) categorically prohibits organ trafficking and transplant tourism and calls on all countries to develop self-sufficient national deceased donation programs. The Islamic position, grounded in the prohibition on selling the human body and in the principle of la darar, is unambiguous: commercial organ trading is prohibited.

For Postgraduate Trainees — the donation conversation: Raising organ donation with a grieving family is a senior, protocol-driven task carried out with the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT) — not something a junior improvises. The team that certifies death must stay independent of the transplant team. As a trainee, know how to recognise a potential donor and whom to call, support the family, and never apply pressure; the decision must be free, informed, and consistent with the patient's prior wishes or the heirs' consent.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 11.1 — The Reluctant Family

A 42-year-old man is declared brain dead following a subarachnoid haemorrhage. He had no registered organ donor status. His wife, clearly in shock, is approached by the transplant coordinator for a discussion about donation. She says: "I don't know if Islam allows this. I don't want him cut up." How do you engage with her? What specific Islamic information is relevant? What happens if she declines?

Case 11.2 — The Living Donor Under Pressure

A 35-year-old man comes to the living donor assessment clinic as a potential kidney donor for his older brother who has end-stage renal disease. During the assessment alone with the clinician, he says: "To be honest, I'm scared. But my family would never forgive me if I said no. My brother has three kids." How do you proceed? What are your ethical obligations? What specific steps must the assessment process include?

Case 11.3 — The Commercial Offer

A 50-year-old woman with end-stage liver disease has been on the transplant waiting list for two years. Her son approaches you and says: "I've found a clinic in another country that says they can get a liver within two weeks. We just need to pay. Can you help us arrange the medical records?" What are your ethical and legal obligations? What do you say to the family?

Case 11.4 — The Allocation Dilemma

Two patients on the liver transplant waiting list are compatible with a newly available liver: Patient A is a 48-year-old woman with autoimmune liver disease, stable condition, waiting two years; Patient B is a 35-year-old man with alcohol-related cirrhosis, acute-on-chronic liver failure, likely to die within days without transplant, alcohol-free for six months. What ethical principles apply? Does the cause of the liver failure influence the decision?

References

• Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer.

Alaamri, M., Hanbali, N. M., Alsulami, W. H., Almaabadi, T. S., Barashid, M. S., Alhofaian, A., … Babkair, L. (2024). Knowledge, attitudes, and barriers of organ donation in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia: A cross-sectional study. Saudi Journal of Kidney Diseases and Transplantation, 34(6), 558–569. https://doi.org/10.4103/sjkdt.sjkdt_26_23

Alhasan, K., Aljamaan, F., Ajlan, A., Aleid, H., Al Ghoufi, T., Alabbad, S. I., … Temsah, M.-H. (2023). Awareness, attitudes, and willingness: A cross-sectional study of organ donation in Saudi Arabia. Healthcare, 11(24), 3126. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11243126

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• Council of Senior Scholars (Hay'at Kibar al-Ulama). (1982). Fatwa No. 99 on organ donation.

• Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group. (2008). The Declaration of Istanbul on organ trafficking and transplant tourism.

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Module 9)

International Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC). (1988). Resolution 26 (1/4): Transplantation and use of human organs (4th Session, Jeddah).

• Islamic Fiqh Council, Muslim World League. (n.d.). Rulings on organ transplantation [Collected resolutions]. Islamic Fiqh Council, Muslim World League.

• World Health Organization. (2010). Guiding principles on human cell, tissue and organ transplantation. WHO.

Chapter 13: Patients with Special Needs

In 1982, in Bloomington, Indiana, a baby boy was born with Down syndrome and a blockage of the oesophagus that surgery could easily have repaired. Because the child had a disability, his parents and doctors chose not to operate, and within days he died — a death that would have been unthinkable for an otherwise healthy newborn. The case, known only as “Baby Doe,” provoked national outrage and new laws protecting infants with disabilities from being denied ordinary care. It crystallised a duty that runs through this chapter: that patients who cannot speak for themselves — the disabled, the very young, those who cannot communicate — are owed not less protection, but more. This chapter is about caring for them justly.

13.1 Vulnerability and the Ethics of Special Obligation

The Saudi Patient Bill of Rights defines people with special needs as "the elderly, chronically ill, physically or mentally disabled, and all those who are unable to help themselves." Vulnerability in healthcare arises from many sources: developmental stage (children who cannot yet exercise full autonomous decision-making), psychiatric illness (which may temporarily or chronically impair judgment), physical disability (which may create communication barriers), cognitive impairment (which affects capacity across a spectrum), and social marginalization.

Contemporary disability ethics has shifted from substituted toward supported decision-making — actively enabling a person with intellectual disability to take part in decisions with appropriate support, rather than simply deciding for them. Evidence in children and adolescents remains limited, but current rights frameworks treat building this capacity as an obligation, not an optional extra (Downs et al., 2024).

The Islamic tradition gives particular emphasis to the care of those who cannot care for themselves. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "The best of you are those who are best to the weak." And: "Allah is in the aid of the servant as long as the servant is in the aid of his brother." (Muslim). These teachings establish a positive duty of care toward vulnerable persons that goes beyond the minimum obligations owed to all patients.

13.2 Children and Pediatric Ethics

Parental Authority and Its Limits

In Islamic law and in the law of most jurisdictions, parents hold guardianship (wilayah) over their minor children and are authorized to make healthcare decisions on their behalf. This authority is extensive but not absolute — it is bounded by the child's best interests. A parent who makes a medical decision clearly contrary to their child's welfare — refusing life-saving treatment, for example — has exceeded the limits of legitimate guardianship. The threshold for overriding parental decisions rises with the severity of the potential harm and the strength of the medical case for intervention.

The Child's Voice: Assent and Emerging Autonomy

As children develop cognitive and moral capacity, their own preferences increasingly deserve weight — even before they reach the legal threshold for autonomous consent. Assent is the child's agreement to a medical procedure, sought in addition to parental consent. A child who clearly refuses a procedure — who says "no" with evident understanding and distress — is communicating something the clinical team has a moral obligation to attend to. Islamic jurisprudence identifies the age of tamyiz (تمييز — discernment, approximately 7 years) as the threshold at which a child's expressed preferences begin to carry moral weight.

Child Abuse and Neglect

Healthcare professionals are among the few adults who regularly have access to children outside the family home. Signs of child abuse must trigger a structured clinical and safeguarding response: documenting clinical findings carefully; speaking with the child privately, separately from the parents; and reporting concerns to the hospital child protection team and relevant authorities. The confidentiality owed to parents does not extend to protecting abusive behaviour toward a child.

13.3 Patients with Mental Illness

The Dual Ethical Challenge

Psychiatric illness creates a dual ethical challenge: on one hand, mental illness can impair the very capacity on which the ethics of autonomy depends; on the other hand, psychiatric patients have historically been among the most abused of all patient populations, subjected to non-consensual treatment and denied the rights that other patients receive. The ethical framework must navigate between paternalistic overriding of genuine autonomous choices and harmful permissiveness toward decisions that are the product of illness rather than genuine self-determination.

Involuntary Treatment

Involuntary psychiatric treatment represents the most significant departure from the autonomy principle in all of medicine. It is ethically justified only when: the patient lacks capacity for the specific decision; the risk of harm is serious; the treatment has a reasonable prospect of benefit; less restrictive alternatives have been considered and are insufficient; and the treatment is consistent with the patient's best interests. Involuntary treatment is not ethically equivalent to punitive detention — the treating team's obligation remains fully intact to provide the highest standard of care, minimize restriction, treat the patient with dignity, and restore voluntary status as soon as safely possible.

Stigma and Non-Discrimination

Psychiatric patients experience pervasive stigma — documented in healthcare settings and affecting clinical decision-making. Patients with psychiatric diagnoses receive less thorough physical healthcare investigation for the same symptoms, are more likely to have physical complaints attributed to their psychiatric condition, and are more likely to have expressed preferences dismissed. This represents a form of discrimination that the physician has an obligation to resist.

13.4 Patients with Physical and Intellectual Disabilities

The Disability Rights Perspective

Research consistently shows that people with disabilities — including severe disabilities — rate their own quality of life significantly higher than non-disabled people and healthcare providers rate it for them. The physician who assumes that a patient with paraplegia, Down syndrome, or profound deafness has a poor quality of life is making a judgment based on their own imagined response to the disability, not on the patient's actual experience. Treatment decisions for patients with disabilities must be based on the patient's own values and preferences — not on the physician's assessment of how the disability affects quality of life.

Patients with communication impairments — those who are deaf, non-verbal, aphasic, or who communicate through assistive technology — have full cognitive and moral status. The physician's obligation is to ensure adequate communication support — interpreters, speech and language therapists, communication aids — not to proceed without meaningful communication because it is more convenient.

13.5 Resource Allocation in Healthcare

Resource allocation decisions occur at three levels: macro-allocation (national-level decisions about how much of the public budget is devoted to healthcare); meso-allocation (institutional decisions about which services a hospital provides); and micro-allocation (bedside decisions about which individual patient receives a scarce resource when not all who need it can receive it — the last ICU bed, the last unit of a scarce blood product). Micro-allocation is the most ethically immediate level for the bedside clinician.

Ethical Frameworks for Allocation

Utilitarian allocation: maximize overall benefit — allocate resources to patients who will derive the greatest benefit. Egalitarian allocation: treat all patients equally — first-come, first-served. Prioritarian allocation: give priority to the worst-off patients — the sickest, the most disadvantaged, those with the most urgent need. Fair innings: each person is entitled to a "fair innings" of life — those who have already had a full life have a weaker claim on scarce resources than those who have not. In practice, most allocation frameworks combine these considerations.

The Islamic Framework for Resource Allocation

Islamic jurisprudence approaches resource allocation through 'adl (عدل — justice) and maslaha (public benefit). Key principles: every person has an equal claim to be treated with dignity regardless of age, wealth, social status, or disability; preventing serious, irreversible harm takes priority; the approach that saves the most lives or prevents the most serious harm is generally preferred; and no allocation based on social worth — the physician and the street cleaner are equal before Allah and before the hospital.

For Postgraduate Trainees — capacity and safeguarding: Assessing decision-making capacity, and any move toward involuntary treatment or restraint, are high-stakes acts that must involve your senior and, where the law requires, a psychiatric or ethics opinion — never a unilateral trainee decision. Favour supported decision-making: actively help the patient take part, with the right communication aids, before concluding they cannot decide. If you suspect abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a vulnerable patient, you have a duty to escalate through the proper safeguarding channel and document your concern.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 12.1 — The Refusing Child

A 10-year-old girl with acute leukaemia requires a bone marrow biopsy to assess treatment response. She is fully aware of her diagnosis. She says clearly: "I don't want the biopsy. I've had too many of them and they hurt too much. I want a break." Her parents insist she should have it. The biopsy is clinically important but not immediately life-threatening to delay. How do you weigh the girl's expressed refusal? What ethical principles apply?

Case 12.2 — The Refusing Psychiatric Patient

A 35-year-old man with schizophrenia is admitted acutely confused and thought-disordered following medication non-compliance. He is refusing insulin for his diabetes, saying the nurses are trying to poison him. His blood glucose is 28 mmol/L. Is this a competent refusal? What capacity assessment is required? Under what conditions may insulin be administered without consent?

Case 12.3 — The Last ICU Bed

Your hospital has one remaining ICU bed. Two patients need it: a 72-year-old man with community-acquired pneumonia, previously well, good prognosis with ICU-level care; and a 45-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer in acute respiratory failure, whose oncologist estimates she has 2-3 months to live even if she recovers. Both patients are competent and want aggressive treatment. How do you apply the allocation frameworks? What ethical principles govern the decision?

Case 12.4 — The Alternative Medicine Patient

A 55-year-old man with Type 2 diabetes and hypertension tells you he has stopped his medications for the past three months and has been treating his conditions with black seed oil, honey, and dietary changes recommended by a herbalist. His HbA1c has risen from 7.2% to 9.8% and his blood pressure is 165/100. He is committed to this approach and becomes defensive when you raise concerns. How do you engage with him? What are your ethical obligations?

References

• Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer.

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. (Chapters 6 and 7)

Downs, J., Keeley, J., Skoss, R., Mills, J., Nevill, T., Schippers, A., … Thompson, S. (2024). Perspectives on the essential skills of healthcare decision making in children and adolescents with intellectual disability. International Journal for Equity in Health, 23, 119. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-024-02204-5

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Modules 9, 12, 13)

• Jonsen, A. R., Siegler, M., & Winslade, W. J. (2022). Clinical ethics (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill. (Topic Four: Contextual Features)

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (n.d.). Patient bill of rights and responsibilities. (Section on Pediatric, Disability, and Mental Patients' Rights)

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

PART FOUR — RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION

Chapter 14: Research Ethics

In 1966, a young investigator for the U.S. Public Health Service named Peter Buxtun filed a formal protest about a study he had stumbled upon: for decades, hundreds of poor Black men in Alabama with syphilis had been left deliberately untreated so that doctors could watch the disease run its course. His complaints went nowhere. Frustrated, in 1972 he handed the file to a journalist, and the story broke across the front pages of America. Public revulsion forced the study to close after forty years — and led directly to the law that now requires an ethics committee to approve research before a single patient is enrolled. This chapter is about the safeguards that one whistle-blower made unavoidable.

14.1 Research and Medical Care: A Fundamental Distinction

The primary role of the physician is to care for the patient before them. Medical research serves a different purpose: it is a systematic investigation designed to develop generalizable knowledge — knowledge that will benefit future patients, not necessarily the present participant. This difference in purpose has profound ethical consequences.

In clinical care, the physician does what is believed to be best for this patient. In research, the investigator does what is necessary to answer a scientific question — which may involve randomizing patients to a treatment they might personally prefer not to receive, administering a placebo instead of active treatment, or subjecting participants to procedures that carry risk without direct therapeutic benefit. Research participants therefore need additional protections: specific disclosure of the research nature of the activity, voluntary consent to participate, independent review of the risk-benefit balance, and the right to withdraw at any time.

14.2 Historical Background: Abuses That Built Modern Research Ethics

Nazi Medical Experiments (1939-1945)

The experiments conducted by German physicians on concentration camp prisoners represent the most systematic and brutal violation of research ethics in recorded history. Prisoners were subjected without consent to high-altitude and hypothermia experiments, deliberate infection with typhus and malaria, surgical amputations without anaesthesia, and injection with gasoline, sea water, and toxic substances. The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial (1946-47) tried 23 defendants (20 of them physicians) and convicted 16; it produced the Nuremberg Code (1947): the first international document establishing binding ethical principles for human subjects research.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972)

Forty years after the Nuremberg Code, the United States Public Health Service was still running a study that violated its principles. The Tuskegee study enrolled roughly 600 African American men in rural Alabama — 399 with latent syphilis and 201 uninfected controls — promising them free medical care. What they received was deliberate observation without treatment — maintained even after penicillin became the standard of care in 1947. The participants were never told they had syphilis. At least 28 men died directly from syphilis, 100 from complications; 40 wives were infected; 19 children were born with congenital syphilis. The public exposure of Tuskegee directly drove the creation of the Belmont Report (1979).

14.3 The Belmont Report (1979): Three Foundational Principles

1. Respect for Persons (Autonomy): People should be treated as autonomous agents — their choices should be respected, and their right to decide whether to participate in research must be genuinely protected. Persons with diminished autonomy are entitled to special protection. This principle grounds the requirement for voluntary informed consent.

2. Beneficence: Do not harm; maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harms. This grounds the requirement for scientific validity — research that cannot answer a meaningful scientific question has no ethical justification for the risks it imposes on participants.

3. Justice: The benefits and burdens of research should be distributed fairly. Historically, research burdens were disproportionately imposed on vulnerable, disadvantaged populations while the benefits accrued primarily to more advantaged groups. Justice requires both that no group be unfairly burdened and that no group be unfairly excluded from research benefits.

14.4 The Declaration of Helsinki (1964; most recently revised 2024)

The WMA Declaration of Helsinki is the most influential international document governing medical research involving human subjects. Key provisions include: the distinction between research and care (participants must understand which components are research and which are treatment); independent ethics committee review (every research study must be reviewed and approved before commencement); informed consent (fully detailed, with specific requirements for vulnerable populations); the therapeutic misconception (investigators must actively correct participants' mistaken belief that experimental treatment is personally tailored care); post-trial obligations (obligations to participants after the research ends); restrictions on placebo use (a placebo control is only ethical when no proven intervention exists); and publication ethics (results must be published — positive and negative). The 2024 revision further strengthened protections for vulnerable groups, the independence of research ethics committees, attention to a study's scientific and social value, and participants' post-trial access to benefit.

In October 2024 the WMA adopted a comprehensive revision of the Declaration — its first major update since 2013. The 2024 text replaces the word "subjects" with "participants" to emphasise autonomy and active involvement, strengthens requirements for ethics review of cross-border research, adds explicit attention to data privacy and the ethical use of artificial intelligence, incorporates research conducted during public-health emergencies, and introduces standards for environmental sustainability (Parums, 2024; Wen et al., 2025). Trainees should be aware that the principles taught here now sit within this updated framework.

14.5 The Saudi Regulatory Framework

The National Committee of Bioethics (NCBE) was established by Royal Decree No. 7/B/9512 (1422H) and affiliated with KACST (King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology). The NCBE provides national oversight of bioethics, sets standards for IRBs, and offers online training and certification for researchers at ncbe.kacst.edu.sa. All Saudi researchers conducting human subjects research are expected to complete the NCBE training course.

Institutional IRBs/RECs: every university and health institution that conducts research maintains its own Research Ethics Committee, through which protocols must be approved before any data are collected. The MOH maintains RECs for health facilities under its jurisdiction. For studies involving new drugs, devices, or biological products, SFDA approval is required in addition to IRB approval. Trainees — undergraduate or postgraduate — are generally not permitted to serve as Principal Investigators (PIs) for studies involving human subjects; they may participate as co-investigators under the supervision of a faculty or consultant PI.

14.6 Informed Consent in Research

In addition to the standard elements of clinical consent, research consent must disclose: that the activity is research, not standard medical care; the purpose of the research; that participation is voluntary and that refusal or withdrawal will not affect the quality of clinical care received; that the research may involve randomization; the expected duration of participation; any compensation provided and any costs incurred; how confidentiality will be protected; who to contact with questions; and the IRB that approved the study. The treating physician and the researcher role must be clearly distinguished where possible, and sufficient time must be provided for reflection before consent is sought.

14.7 Research Misconduct: FFP

Fabrication

Fabricating data means inventing results that were not actually observed — creating observations, measurements, or participant responses that did not occur. This is the most serious form of misconduct because it introduces false information into the scientific record that may influence clinical practice, pharmaceutical licensing, and public health policy.

Falsification

Falsification involves manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or altering or omitting data so that the research findings no longer accurately represent what was observed. This includes selectively removing outlier data points to improve statistical significance, altering the scale on a graph to make a small effect appear large, or reporting only the time points that support the hypothesis. Image manipulation — digitally altering scientific images (Western blots, microscopy, radiological images) — is a form of falsification actively detected by publishers and ethics bodies.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism in research includes appropriating another researcher's ideas, methods, results, or words without proper attribution — presenting them as one's own. This extends to self-plagiarism (republishing one's own previously published work without disclosure) and data plagiarism (presenting another researcher's unpublished data as one's own).

Why Research Misconduct Matters

The consequences of research misconduct extend far beyond the dishonest researcher: patients may be harmed by treatments licensed on the basis of fabricated efficacy data; resources are wasted on follow-up studies of fabricated findings; public trust in science is corroded; and careers of honest researchers are damaged when they cannot replicate fabricated results. High-profile examples — including the Wakefield MMR-autism fabrication (retracted 2010) — demonstrate that the consequences of medical research misconduct are not academic; they directly affect clinical practice and patient care across the world.

14.8 Animal Research Ethics and the Three Rs

The ethical framework for animal research is built around the Three Rs: Replace (use non-animal alternatives — cell cultures, computer models, organoids — where scientifically valid); Reduce (minimize the number of animals used to the minimum necessary to answer the scientific question); and Refine (minimize pain, suffering, distress, and lasting harm to the animals used — through anaesthesia, analgesics, humane endpoints, and improved housing). Islamic jurisprudence permits the use of animals in medical research that is necessary and that minimizes suffering — grounded in the principle that necessity permits what is otherwise prohibited and in the Islamic ethic of responsible stewardship of animals. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Allah has prescribed proficiency in all things. Thus, if you kill, kill well; and if you slaughter, slaughter well." (Muslim). This principle of ihsan (excellence and care) extends to the treatment of research animals.

14.9 The Islamic Framework for Research Ethics

Islamic jurisprudence approaches research ethics through several foundational principles: the obligation to seek knowledge (talab al-'ilm) — pursuit of medical knowledge that alleviates suffering is a form of fard kifayah (collective duty); the conditions of maslaha — research is ethically permissible when it serves genuine public benefit and the risk to participants does not outweigh the expected benefit; informed consent as amanah — the researcher's obligation of truthful disclosure, protection of privacy, and honoring the terms of the consent agreement; and protection of the vulnerable — Islam's strong ethic of care for the weak applies directly to research.

For Postgraduate Trainees — research as a junior: Trainees are usually permitted to take part in research as co-investigators under a supervising principal investigator, not to run studies on human subjects as PI themselves. Obtain ethics-committee approval before any data collection, never alter or 'tidy' data to fit a hypothesis, and ensure that consent for research is genuinely voluntary and separate from clinical care — patients must understand that declining will not affect their treatment.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 13.1 — The Retrospective Study

A medical student wants to conduct a research project comparing outcomes in two groups of patients who received different surgical approaches for appendicitis over the past five years. The data already exists in hospital records. A fellow student tells him: "You don't need IRB approval — it's just a chart review, and the patients are already treated." Is this correct? What ethical and regulatory obligations apply? What specific steps must the student take before beginning data collection?

Case 13.2 — The Pressured Enrollment

A consultant physician conducting a clinical trial of a new antihypertensive approaches each hypertensive patient in his clinic and says: "I want to add you to my research study — it's an important study and I think you'd benefit from the new medication. Can you sign here?" Is this appropriate research consent? What are the specific ethical problems? How should research enrollment be conducted differently from routine clinical care?

Case 13.3 — The Suspicious Data

A junior researcher notices that her supervisor's published paper reports results that appear inconsistent with the raw data she helped collect — the published paper reports outcomes for 200 patients, but the researcher can only account for 147 patients in the database. When she raises this, the supervisor dismisses her: "You don't have the full picture — trust the analysis." What are her ethical obligations? Who should she contact?

Case 13.4 — The Genetics Incidental Finding

A 35-year-old woman participates in a genome-wide association study of diabetes. During data analysis, a researcher discovers she carries a BRCA1 mutation associated with dramatically elevated lifetime risk of breast and ovarian cancer. This was not part of the study's aims. What are the researcher's obligations? Does the woman have a right to this information? Does she have a right not to receive it?

References

• Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer.

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. (Chapter 7)

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Module 11)

• National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects. (1979). The Belmont Report. US DHHS.

• National Committee of Bioethics (NCBE), KACST. (n.d.). Bioethics online training course. https://www.ncbe.kacst.edu.sa

• Parums, D. V. (2024). Editorial: The 2024 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki and its continued role as a code of ethics to guide medical research. Medical Science Monitor, 30, e947428. https://doi.org/10.12659/MSM.947428

• Wen, B., Zhang, G., Zhan, C., Chen, C., & Yi, H. (2025). The 2024 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki: A modern ethical framework for medical research. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 101(1194), 371–382. https://doi.org/10.1093/postmj/qgae181

• World Medical Association. (2024). Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects (Revised 2024).

Chapter 15: Scientific Publication Ethics

In 1998, a respected British medical journal published a study suggesting that a common childhood vaccine might cause autism. The paper described only twelve children, but its effect was vast: frightened parents stopped vaccinating, and preventable diseases returned. Years of investigation revealed that the lead author had manipulated the data, that undisclosed payments had compromised his work, and that the findings were simply false. In 2010 the journal retracted the paper and the author was struck off the medical register — but the damage to public trust outlived the correction. The episode is a warning that a single dishonest publication can cost lives. This chapter examines honesty, authorship, and integrity in scientific writing.

15.1 Why Publication Ethics Matters

Every clinical decision you will make as a physician will be informed — directly or indirectly — by published research. The drug doses you prescribe, the screening intervals you recommend, the surgical techniques you employ, the guidelines you follow: all are built upon a foundation of published evidence. If that foundation is contaminated by fabricated data, distorted by suppressed negative results, or misrepresented through ghost authorship and plagiarism, the clinical decisions built upon it will be less safe. Publication ethics is not an abstract academic concern. It is a patient safety issue.

The stakes became viscerally clear in 1998, when Andrew Wakefield published a paper in The Lancet claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The paper was fabricated — the data manipulated, the conflicts of interest undisclosed. By the time it was retracted in 2010, it had triggered a global decline in MMR vaccination rates and a resurgence of measles in countries that had all but eliminated it. Children died from a preventable disease because a paper should never have been published.

15.2 Foundational Principles of Publication Ethics

1. Honesty: All aspects of the research process must be reported truthfully. This means reporting results as they were actually found, reporting negative results with the same care as positive ones, and acknowledging limitations clearly.

2. Transparency: The research process must be open to scrutiny — registering clinical trials before commencement, sharing data and methods in sufficient detail for replication, disclosing all conflicts of interest, and identifying all contributors.

3. Accountability: Researchers are accountable to their participants, the scientific community, and the patients who will ultimately be affected. Each author who signs their name to a paper accepts responsibility for the integrity of its content.

4. Fairness: Credit must be attributed fairly — to all who contributed substantively, and to those whose prior work is built upon.

5. Reproducibility: Science advances through replication. Research that cannot be replicated — because methods are insufficiently described or data are unavailable — blocks rather than advances knowledge.

6. Integrity toward Patients: Research participants trusted the investigator with their time, their bodies, and sometimes their lives. The minimum return on that trust is honest, complete, accurately reported knowledge.

15.3 Forms of Publication Misconduct

Plagiarism and Its Forms

Verbatim plagiarism: copying text directly without quotation marks and citation. Paraphrasing plagiarism: rewording another's ideas without credit. Idea plagiarism: appropriating a conceptual framework without acknowledging its origin. Data plagiarism: using another researcher's unpublished data without authorization. Image plagiarism: using figures, photographs, or tables without attribution and permission.

A newer and especially corrosive form of misconduct is the paper mill — a commercial operation that produces and sells fabricated or low-quality manuscripts, fake data, and even authorship slots to clients facing publication pressure (Wittau & Seifert, 2024). Paper mills have driven a sharp rise in retractions: a scoping review of the Retraction Watch database identified hundreds of paper-mill articles that had together accumulated thousands of citations before being retracted (Pérez-Neri et al., 2022). The response has become a coordinated, cross-publisher effort — exemplified by the United2Act initiative — to detect and deter such fraud (Byrne et al., 2024). For a trainee the lesson is direct: never buy or sell authorship, never submit to a journal that guarantees acceptance for a fee, and treat your publication record as a matter of integrity rather than quantity.

Self-Plagiarism

Duplicate publication: submitting identical or near-identical work to two journals simultaneously without disclosure. Text recycling: reusing substantial portions of methods, results, or discussion from a previous paper without acknowledgment. Salami publication (salami slicing): dividing the results of a single study into multiple small papers, each reporting a slice of the dataset, to maximize publication count. Each paper implies a complete study; together they misrepresent the scope and significance of the research.

Fabrication, Falsification, and Image Manipulation

As discussed in Chapter 14, fabrication (inventing data) and falsification (manipulating data) in the context of publication mean that the published literature contains false information with potentially serious clinical consequences. Digital image processing has made it trivially easy to alter scientific images in ways that support a desired result. Most journals now have specific image integrity policies, and image manipulation is actively detected by publishers and ethics bodies.

15.4 Authorship: Criteria, Problems, and Obligations

The ICMJE Criteria

The ICMJE defines authorship by four criteria, all of which must be met: (1) substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; (2) drafting the work or critically revising it for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. An individual who meets all four criteria should be listed as an author. An individual who does not meet all four should not — regardless of their status, their funding, or their relationship to the research team.

Ghost, Guest, and Gift Authorship

Ghost authorship: failure to list someone who has made substantial contributions to the work — most commonly involves professional medical writers employed by pharmaceutical companies. When the person who drafted the paper is not accountable for its content, the accountability structure of authorship breaks down. Guest (honorary) authorship: listing someone who did not meet the ICMJE criteria because of their seniority or prestige. Gift authorship: listing a colleague as an author in exchange for a favor — future authorship on their papers, help with grants, or social goodwill.

Contributor Statements and the Corresponding Author

Most journals now require a contributor statement — a specific description of each author's contribution. The corresponding author bears primary responsibility for: ensuring all listed authors meet the ICMJE criteria; managing communication with the journal; ensuring all authors have seen, approved, and agreed to submit the final manuscript; disclosing all conflicts of interest; and responding to post-publication queries.

15.5 Peer Review Ethics

A reviewer who accepts an invitation to review a manuscript incurs obligations: honesty (provide a thorough, honest evaluation of scientific merit); confidentiality (the manuscript is privileged information — must not be shared or used for any purpose outside the review); timeliness (respond promptly — late reviews delay publication of potentially important work); impartiality (review based on scientific merit, not the identity of the authors); and conflict of interest disclosure (declare any personal, professional, or financial relationship with the authors and decline if it would compromise objectivity).

Reviewer misconduct includes: using unpublished ideas from a reviewed manuscript in one's own work (intellectual theft made possible by privileged access); delaying review to gain competitive advantage; recommending rejection of a competitor's valid work; and revealing the identity of authors in a blinded review. Editors bear responsibility for: selecting qualified, unbiased reviewers; making editorial decisions based on scientific merit; acting on concerns about research integrity promptly; and maintaining records of decisions and reasoning.

15.6 Conflicts of Interest and Consequences

The most extensively documented conflicts of interest in medical publishing are financial — specifically, the influence of pharmaceutical and medical device industry funding on research outcomes. Studies consistently show that industry-funded clinical trials produce more favorable outcomes for the sponsor's product than independently funded trials of the same interventions. The disclosure obligation: all financial relationships relevant to the research must be disclosed to the journal at submission. Disclosure does not eliminate the conflict; it makes it transparent, allowing readers to factor it into their interpretation of the findings.

A retraction is the formal withdrawal of a published paper following a determination that it contains major errors or misconduct that invalidate its conclusions. Retracted papers continue to be cited at alarming rates — studies suggest a significant proportion of retractions are cited positively by authors who appear unaware of or indifferent to the retraction. For individual researchers, publication misconduct can result in: termination of employment; loss of research funding; loss of professional license; requirement to complete additional training; criminal prosecution (in cases of fraud involving grant money); and civil liability (in cases where patients were harmed).

15.7 International Standards Bodies

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics): Founded in 1997, COPE provides guidelines, case discussions, and training resources on all aspects of publication ethics. Journals that are COPE members commit to upholding its guidelines. ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors): The ICMJE Recommendations — informally known as the Vancouver Guidelines — define standards for authorship, reporting, conflicts of interest, and research ethics that govern the major international medical journals. WAME (World Association of Medical Editors): provides guidance and training for medical journal editors with a focus on ethics education and peer review quality. EQUATOR Network: provides reporting guidelines for different types of studies (CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports).

15.8 The Islamic Framework for Publication Ethics

Sidq (صدق — truthfulness) is the first obligation: reporting results honestly, acknowledging uncertainty, not overstating findings or suppressing inconvenient data. Amanah (أمانة — trustworthiness) governs the researcher's relationship with participants, the scientific community, and future patients. Ihsan (إحسان — excellence) demands that researchers design rigorous studies, collect data carefully, analyze honestly, and report completely. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Allah loves that when any of you does a task, they do it with excellence." (Tabarani). The prohibition on riya' (رياء — ostentation) warns against the pursuit of publication for professional advancement or personal recognition rather than the genuine advancement of knowledge.

For Postgraduate Trainees — authorship and publication pressure: The drive to publish for promotion or a fellowship application is real, but it does not license gift authorship, ghost authorship, salami-slicing, or duplicate submission. You earn authorship by substantial contribution, not by seniority or by supplying patients. Do not add a chief who did not contribute, and do not accept your name on work you did not help produce — both are forms of dishonesty that the SCFHS and journals increasingly sanction.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 14.1 — The Authorship Dispute

A junior resident conducts a retrospective chart review and writes the manuscript entirely. Her supervisor — who suggested the research question at a departmental meeting but had no further involvement — insists on being listed as first author. The department chairman, who reviewed the manuscript once before submission, expects to be listed as last author. Apply the ICMJE criteria. Who qualifies as an author? What should the junior resident do?

Case 14.2 — The Selective Reporting

A pharmaceutical company sponsors a multi-centre trial of a new antibiotic. The trial shows the drug is effective for one of its two primary endpoints but not the other. The company's publication team suggests writing the paper as if the effective endpoint was always the primary one, and relegating the ineffective endpoint to a supplementary table. Is this fabrication, falsification, or neither? What are the ethical obligations of the named academic authors?

Case 14.3 — The Peer Review Opportunity

A researcher is asked to review a manuscript describing a clinical trial on a topic closely related to his own unpublished research. He realizes one of the methods described is similar to an approach he has been developing independently. He completes the review fairly and recommends major revisions. Six months later, he incorporates the same methodological approach into his own paper without citing the reviewed manuscript. Is this a publication ethics violation?

Case 14.4 — The Retracted Citation

During preparation of a systematic review, a medical student discovers that one of three key papers supporting a widely used clinical guideline was retracted two years ago due to data fabrication. The guideline committee has not updated the guideline. The student's supervisor suggests "quietly leaving out" the retracted paper and continuing. What are the ethical obligations? To whom, and through what channels, should the concern be raised?

References

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Byrne, J. A., Abalkina, A., Akinduro-Aje, O., Christopher, J., Eaton, S. E., Joshi, N., … Wright, J. (2024). A call for research to address the threat of paper mills. PLoS Biology, 22(11), e3002931. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002931

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (n.d.). Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing. https://www.publicationethics.org

• EQUATOR Network. (n.d.). Reporting guidelines for health research. https://www.equator-network.org

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Module 11)

• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). (n.d.). Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. https://www.icmje.org

Pérez-Neri, I., Pineda, C., & Sandoval, H. (2022). Threats to scholarly research integrity arising from paper mills: A rapid scoping review. Clinical Rheumatology, 41(7), 2241–2248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-022-06198-9

Wittau, J., & Seifert, R. (2024). How to fight fake papers: A review on important information sources and steps towards solution of the problem. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology, 397(12), 9281–9294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-024-03272-8

• World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). (n.d.). Publication ethics policies for medical journals. https://www.wame.org

Chapter 16: Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Academia

In 1966, a computer scientist at MIT named Joseph Weizenbaum wrote a simple program called ELIZA that imitated a psychotherapist, echoing the user’s words back as questions. It understood nothing. Yet Weizenbaum was unsettled to find that people — including his own secretary, who asked him to leave the room — quickly came to believe the program cared about them, and confided their most private troubles to it. He spent the rest of his life warning that we are dangerously willing to trust a machine that merely sounds as though it understands. Sixty years on, far more capable programs now suggest diagnoses and draft our notes. This chapter asks how to use them wisely — without repeating Weizenbaum’s lesson.

16.1 A Technology That Arrived Before the Ethics

AI is not coming to medicine; it is already here. Large language models generate clinical documentation, draft referral letters, and answer patient queries. Diagnostic algorithms analyze radiology images, pathology slides, and ECGs. Predictive models stratify patients by risk and flag potential drug interactions. Students use generative AI to write assignments, summarize literature, and prepare for examinations. None of these applications is inherently wrong. Many are genuinely beneficial. All require ethical frameworks that medicine has only begun to develop.

16.2 What AI Is and How It Works in Medicine

Machine learning (ML): Systems that learn patterns from large datasets without being explicitly programmed with rules. A ML model trained on thousands of chest X-rays labeled as normal or abnormal learns to identify features associated with each category. Deep learning: A subset of ML using neural networks with many layers, particularly powerful for image recognition. Most high-performing medical imaging AI tools — in radiology, pathology, dermatology, and ophthalmology — are deep learning systems.

Natural language processing (NLP): AI that understands, generates, and transforms human language. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and others are NLP systems capable of producing coherent, contextually appropriate text across a wide range of topics. Predictive analytics: Systems that use patient data to predict future events such as hospital readmission, sepsis onset, or deterioration.

16.3 Algorithmic Bias and Health Equity

Algorithmic bias — the production of systematically discriminatory outputs arising from training data that does not adequately represent the full population — is one of the most serious ethical problems with AI in medicine. If a model is trained primarily on data from one demographic group, it will perform less well on groups underrepresented in the training set. The dermatology example is well documented: dermatology AI tools trained predominantly on lighter skin tones have been shown to perform less accurately on darker skin tones, with potentially fatal consequences. Similar patterns exist in cardiovascular risk calculators and natural-language models. (A related but mechanistically distinct disparity affects pulse oximetry: its reduced accuracy in patients with darker skin arises from the optical physics of sensor calibration, not from a biased training dataset — a reminder that not every inequity in a medical device is an "algorithmic" bias.) A landmark analysis demonstrated that a widely used US population-health algorithm affecting millions of patients systematically underestimated the illness burden of Black patients, because it used health-care cost as a proxy for health need (Obermeyer et al., 2019).

Algorithmic bias in medical AI is not merely a technical problem; it is a justice problem. When AI tools systematically perform less well for patients from ethnic minorities, lower socioeconomic groups, or underrepresented populations, they exacerbate existing health inequities. The Islamic principle of 'adl (justice) requires that AI systems be tested for bias across all relevant population subgroups before clinical deployment. The physician who uses an AI diagnostic tool is not absolved of responsibility for its outputs — they must know the population on which the tool was validated and whether it is appropriate for the patients they serve.

16.4 AI in Clinical Decision-Making: Ethical Opportunities and Risks

The Benefits

Improved diagnostic accuracy in defined settings; extended access (AI-assisted diagnostic tools can bring specialist-level pattern recognition to healthcare settings that cannot recruit specialist physicians); error reduction (AI systems do not fatigue or develop cognitive biases from a long shift); and earlier detection (predictive models can identify patients at risk of deterioration hours before clinical signs become apparent, enabling earlier intervention).

The Risks

Over-reliance (automation bias): the human tendency to over-trust automated systems — to accept their outputs uncritically — is well documented. A physician who accepts an AI diagnosis without clinical judgment is not practicing medicine; they are operating a machine. The AI output is a prior probability, not a clinical conclusion. The black box problem: many high-performance AI systems are not interpretable — the physician cannot understand why the system reached a particular conclusion, creating a specific informed consent problem. Deskilling: physicians may lose the ability to perform tasks that AI routinely performs for them. Privacy erosion: clinical AI systems require access to large quantities of patient data, creating risks that extend beyond the individual clinical encounter.

The Human-Centered Care Imperative

Technology has not changed the fundamental nature of the clinical encounter. A patient who comes to a physician is not coming for an algorithm; they are coming for a person — someone who will listen, understand, communicate, make judgments that integrate clinical evidence with the patient's individual values, and bear responsibility for those judgments. No AI system can provide the human quality of compassionate presence. The ethical imperative is not to resist AI but to ensure that its deployment enhances rather than replaces the human dimensions of care.

16.5 Academic Integrity in the Age of Generative AI

Large language model tools can produce coherent, academically formatted text on almost any medical topic in response to a simple prompt. They can draft assignments, summarize literature, generate case discussions, and produce content superficially indistinguishable from a student's own work.

Prohibited Uses

Submitting AI-generated text as one's own original work without disclosure; using AI to generate answers to examination questions; using AI to fabricate clinical case data or patient interactions in assignments; and allowing AI to perform the substantive intellectual work that an assignment is designed to develop.

The Deeper Problem: Learning vs. Appearing to Learn

The most serious concern about AI use in medical education is not dishonesty but bypassed learning. The physician who used AI to pass their medical education without developing genuine clinical reasoning will face a patient whose presentation does not match any template the AI provides — and will be dangerous. Medical education is not credential accumulation; it is the development of clinical competence. AI that bypasses the learning process bypasses the competence, while producing the credential.

The Obligation of Disclosure and Critical Appraisal

When AI tools are used legitimately in academic work, disclosure obligations apply. Students should follow their institution's AI use policy; disclose AI use in any work where it is relevant; and critically appraise AI outputs before incorporating them — LLMs generate plausible-sounding text that may be factually incorrect, poorly evidenced, or culturally inappropriate. The Islamic obligation of critical appraisal (tathabbut, تثبت) is directly relevant: the Quran commands: "O you who believe, if a wicked person brings you any news, verify it." (Al-Hujurat 49:6). AI-generated text must be verified before acting on it.

16.6 Data Privacy and AI-Assisted Research

Patient data used to train AI models may be de-identified at the time of use but remain potentially re-identifiable. Research has shown that combining seemingly innocuous data points — age, diagnosis, hospital, date of admission — can re-identify individuals even from anonymized datasets. When hospitals partner with technology companies to develop AI tools, patient data may be transferred to commercial entities without patients' knowledge. The principle: the primary purpose for which patients share their health data is their own care. Any secondary use requires explicit, specific consent or a robust legal and ethical framework.

COPE and the AMA have both issued guidance on AI tools in research and publication. The consensus position: AI tools cannot be listed as authors (authorship requires the ability to take responsibility for the work — AI cannot do this); use of AI in generating text, analyzing data, or creating figures must be disclosed in the methods section and acknowledgments; and the authors are fully responsible for all AI-assisted content. These positions reflect a now-consistent international consensus across journals and ethics bodies (Inam et al., 2024; Nazarovets & Teixeira da Silva, 2024).

16.7 The Islamic Framework for AI Ethics

Human dignity (karama) and the non-negotiability of human value: The Quran establishes that Allah has honored the children of Adam (Al-Isra 17:70). AI systems that reduce human beings to data points must be governed by human oversight that ensures the patient's dignity and individuality are never lost in the computation. Amanah (trustworthiness): When a patient submits to an AI-assisted diagnostic process, they place a trust in the healthcare system that the tools being used are fit for purpose, appropriately validated, and deployed with their interest at heart. Sidq (truthfulness) requires that every communication sent in the physician's name reflects their own honest assessment, not merely the output of a tool they have not critically evaluated. Tawadu' (تواضع — humility): The Islamic virtue of recognizing one's own limitations applies directly to AI — an AI system trained on historical data does not know what it does not know, and the clinician who uses AI as a tool rather than an oracle is practicing intellectual humility that is both ethically sound and clinically safer.

16.8 The Emerging Governance Landscape

The speed of generative-AI adoption has forced regulators and professional bodies to respond. In 2024 the World Health Organization issued dedicated guidance on the ethics and governance of large multi-modal models (LMMs) in health — more than 40 recommendations spanning five application areas (diagnosis and clinical care, patient-guided use, clerical and administrative tasks, medical and nursing education, and scientific research) — while warning that these systems can generate false, biased, or incomplete output that harms those who rely on it (World Health Organization, 2024). Systematic and umbrella reviews of large language models such as ChatGPT confirm both rapid uptake across diagnosis, decision support, and education and a recurring set of unresolved concerns about accuracy, evaluation rigour, and ethical alignment (Iqbal et al., 2025; Shool et al., 2025). Responsible integration depends less on the technology's capability than on structured, governed adoption with clinician oversight (Reddy, 2024).

For trainees in Saudi Arabia, two national reference points matter. The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) has issued national AI Ethics Principles organised around fairness, privacy and security, humanity, social and environmental benefit, reliability and safety, transparency and explainability, and accountability (SDAIA, 2023). The Saudi Food and Drug Authority regulates AI- and machine-learning-based medical devices and requires marketing authorisation before clinical use. A clinician who uses an AI tool should know whether it is an authorised medical device and on which population it was validated.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 15.1 — The AI Diagnosis

A 55-year-old woman presents to a primary care clinic with a skin lesion on her forearm. The clinic has recently deployed an AI-assisted dermatology tool. The tool reports: "99% confidence — benign seborrheic keratosis." The physician, trusting the AI, reassures the patient without performing a clinical examination of the lesion itself. Six months later, the lesion is biopsied at a specialist clinic and found to be an early melanoma. What are the ethical failures in this scenario?

Case 15.2 — The AI Assignment

A final-year medical student uses a large language model to draft a 2,000-word essay on informed consent for a written assignment. She reads the essay, finds it broadly accurate, makes minor edits, and submits it under her name without disclosure. Typical institutional policy states: "AI tools may be used to support learning, but all submitted work must represent the student's own intellectual effort." Has she violated academic integrity? What are the ethical issues?

Case 15.3 — The Patient Data Request

A technology company approaches your hospital with a proposal to develop an AI system for predicting sepsis onset. In exchange for access to five years of de-identified inpatient records, the company will provide the hospital with a licence to use the resulting algorithm. The ethics committee asks you to review the proposal. What ethical issues does it raise? What conditions would need to be met for the data sharing to be ethically acceptable?

Case 15.4 — The LLM Co-Author

A junior researcher writes a paper using an AI tool to draft the introduction and discussion sections, which she then significantly revised. She discloses the AI use in the methods section. Her supervisor insists this disclosure will harm the paper's chances of acceptance and demands she remove it. What are the ethical obligations? What should the junior researcher do?

References

• American College of Physicians. (2019). ACP ethics manual (7th ed.). (Section on Electronic Communications and Telemedicine)

• American Medical Association. (2018). Augmented intelligence in health care (AMA Policy).

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2023). Position statement on AI and authorship. https://www.publicationethics.org

Inam, M., Sheikh, S., Minhas, A. M. K., Vaughan, E. M., Krittanawong, C., Samad, Z., … Virani, S. S. (2024). A review of top cardiology and cardiovascular medicine journal guidelines regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence tools in scientific writing. Current Problems in Cardiology, 49(3), 102387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpcardiol.2024.102387

Iqbal, U., Tanweer, A., Rahmanti, A. R., Greenfield, D., Lee, L. T.-J., & Li, Y.-C. J. (2025). Impact of large language model (ChatGPT) in healthcare: An umbrella review and evidence synthesis. Journal of Biomedical Science, 32, 45. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12929-025-01131-z

Nazarovets, S., & Teixeira da Silva, J. A. (2024). ChatGPT as an "author": Bibliometric analysis to assess the validity of authorship. Accountability in Research, 32(7), 1148–1158. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2024.2345713

Obermeyer, Z., Powers, B., Vogeli, C., & Mullainathan, S. (2019). Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations. Science, 366(6464), 447–453. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax2342

Reddy, S. (2024). Generative AI in healthcare: An implementation science informed translational path on application, integration and governance. Implementation Science, 19, 27. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-024-01357-9

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority. (2023). AI ethics principles (Version 2.0). SDAIA.

Shool, S., Adimi, S., Saboori Amleshi, R., Bitaraf, E., Golpira, R., & Tara, M. (2025). A systematic review of large language model (LLM) evaluations in clinical medicine. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 25, 117. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-025-02954-4

World Health Organization. (2024). Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health: Guidance on large multi-modal models. WHO.

• World Medical Association. (2019). Statement on augmented intelligence in medical care. WMA.

PART FIVE — PUBLIC HEALTH AND SYSTEMS ETHICS

Chapter 17: Public Health and Preventive Medicine Ethics

In the early 1900s, a cook named Mary Mallon moved from household to household in New York, and wherever she worked, people fell ill with typhoid fever. Mary felt perfectly healthy and angrily denied being the cause — yet she was an unwitting carrier, spreading the disease through the food she prepared. In 1907 the health authorities seized her and confined her to an island, where, with one brief interruption, she would spend most of the rest of her life in isolation. Her case poses the defining dilemma of public-health ethics: how far may a society go in restricting one person’s liberty to protect the health of the many? This chapter weighs the good of the community against the rights of the individual.

17.1 The Shift from Individual to Population

For most of this book, the ethical focus has been on the individual patient. Public health ethics requires a different lens. When a public health official decides whether to mandate a vaccine, when a policymaker designs a tobacco control law, when a clinician considers whether to report a communicable disease — they are making decisions that affect not one person but thousands, or millions. The ethical frameworks that govern individual clinical care are necessary but insufficient for these population-level decisions.

The COVID-19 pandemic made the ethics of scarcity concrete. When ventilators or intensive-care beds may be outstripped by demand, allocation should follow pre-declared, transparent crisis standards based on medical appropriateness rather than ad hoc bedside decisions (Kirkpatrick et al., 2020). Different frameworks pull in different directions — a utilitarian aim of saving the most lives must be weighed against equal respect for each person — and societies must choose openly which values they are willing to trade (Savulescu et al., 2020).

Public health and preventive medicine are, as defined by the American Board of Preventive Medicine, "that specialty of medical practice which focuses on the health of individuals, communities, and defined populations in order to protect, promote, and maintain health and well-being and prevent disease, disability, and premature death." They are concerned with the upstream determinants of health — the social, environmental, behavioral, and biological conditions that produce or prevent illness before it reaches the clinic.

17.2 The Public Health Code of Ethics: Core Values

1. Professionalism and Trust

Public health effectiveness depends on public trust. Populations who received honest, complete information — including acknowledgment of uncertainty — are more compliant with public health measures than those who received oversimplified or politicized messaging. Public health practitioners and organizations promote competence, honesty, and accuracy and ensure that their work is not unduly influenced by secondary interests.

2. Health and Safety

Health and safety are essential conditions for human flourishing. Public health practitioners have an ethical responsibility to prevent, minimize, and mitigate health harms — not only through direct clinical intervention but through advocacy, policy, and structural change.

3. Health Justice and Equity

Human flourishing requires that all people have equal opportunities to achieve health. Health equity requires attention to the social determinants of health — income, education, housing, food security, occupation — that systematically produce health disparities across population groups. The public health professional has an ethical obligation to address these disparities: not only to measure them, but to use their knowledge, skills, and professional influence to advocate for the conditions that make health possible for all.

4. Inclusivity and Stewardship

Public health decisions that affect communities should be made with the genuine participation of those communities — not imposed upon them by experts who believe they know best. Public health professionals are also custodians of public funds and public trust. Resources must be used efficiently, fairly, and for their designated purposes.

17.3 The Central Tension: Individual Autonomy vs. Collective Benefit

The most fundamental ethical tension in public health is the conflict between individual autonomy — the right of persons to make their own choices — and the collective benefit that may require restricting those choices for the good of the whole. This tension manifests in virtually every domain of public health: a person who chooses not to vaccinate exercises autonomy, but potentially exposes others who cannot be vaccinated; a person who refuses quarantine during an infectious disease outbreak exercises autonomy, but may transmit a serious illness to others.

Utilitarianism provides a clear answer: the action that maximizes overall welfare is the right one. If mandatory vaccination produces enough collective benefit to outweigh the individual autonomy cost, it is ethically justified. The harm principle (John Stuart Mill) offers a middle path: individual liberty may be restricted only to prevent harm to others. The Islamic framework is not individualistic — Islam describes the community (ummah) as a body: "The believers in their mutual kindness, compassion, and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever." (Bukhari and Muslim). This framing explicitly supports collective action to prevent harm spreading through the community.

17.4 Vaccination Ethics

Vaccination is the most cost-effective public health intervention in history. Smallpox has been eradicated; polio is on the verge of eradication; measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, and dozens of other once-devastating diseases have been dramatically reduced. These achievements required that a sufficiently high proportion of the population be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity — the threshold above which transmission cannot be sustained even among unvaccinated individuals.

The ethical case for vaccination rests on: beneficence (vaccination protects the individual recipient from serious illness); non-maleficence toward third parties (by reducing transmission, vaccination protects those who cannot protect themselves — newborns, immunocompromised individuals, infants too young to be vaccinated); justice (herd immunity is a collective good produced by collective action — free-riding is unfair to those who bear the cost of maintaining the protection from which all benefit); and the Islamic perspective (Islamic jurisprudence supports vaccination under the principles of la darar wa la dirar and hifz al-nafs — several contemporary Islamic scholars have issued fatwas explicitly supporting vaccination as a religious obligation of health preservation).

Vaccine Hesitancy

Vaccine hesitancy — the delay or refusal of vaccination despite availability — is driven by a complex mix of safety concerns, misinformation, distrust of healthcare systems, and religious misunderstanding. The ethical response is engagement: addressing safety concerns with accurate evidence-based information; acknowledging and investigating genuine adverse events; building trust; engaging religious and community leaders as partners; and providing vaccination services in culturally acceptable settings.

17.5 Disease Screening Ethics

The Wilson-Jungner Criteria

Table 16.1 — The Wilson–Jungner Screening Criteria (WHO, 1968)

The internationally accepted criteria for a population screening program (WHO, 1968) require that: the condition is an important health problem; there is an accepted treatment; facilities for diagnosis and treatment are available; there is a recognizable latent or early symptomatic stage; a suitable test is available; the test is acceptable to the population; the natural history is adequately understood; there is an agreed policy on whom to treat; the cost is economically balanced; and case-finding is a continuing process.

The Harm Side of Screening

Screening is not without harm. False positives generate anxiety and may lead to unnecessary investigations and treatment. In cancer screening, overdiagnosis — the detection of cancers that would never have caused symptoms in the patient's lifetime — is a recognized harm of significant population impact. False negatives may falsely reassure a person who does have early disease. The right not to be screened must be respected: a person who, after full information, declines a screening test is exercising a legitimate autonomous choice.

17.6 Communicable Disease Control and the Ethics of Quarantine

Isolation separates sick individuals from healthy ones to prevent transmission. Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of individuals who have been exposed but are not yet symptomatic. Both represent restrictions on individual liberty for the protection of others. Their ethical justification requires: the disease poses a serious risk to others; restriction is necessary and less restrictive measures are insufficient; restriction is proportionate; due process protections exist; and basic rights are maintained during restriction (adequate food, shelter, healthcare, communication).

The Islamic tradition explicitly supports quarantine through the Prophetic hadith: "If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; but if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place." (Bukhari). In Islamic jurisprudence, the obligation to prevent harm to others (la darar) justifies restrictions on individual freedom of movement when communicable disease risk is genuine and serious.

17.7 Health Promotion and Social Determinants

The Ethics of Nudging

A nudge is a policy intervention that alters the choice environment in ways that predictably influence behavior without restricting options or changing incentives significantly. Classic examples: placing fruit at eye level in a school cafeteria; making organ donation the default requiring opt-out rather than opt-in; printing calorie counts on menus. Nudging is ethically less intrusive than mandates but not ethically neutral — it is not fully transparent, and it can be used to serve commercial interests as well as public health interests. The ethical use of nudging requires transparency about the nudge, direction toward genuine population benefit, and preservation of real choice.

Addressing Social Determinants

The most powerful determinants of population health are social: income inequality, educational attainment, housing quality, food security, occupational safety, and social cohesion. The physician who treats one diabetic patient but does not engage with the social conditions that produce diabetes across a community is addressing the symptom while ignoring the cause. The Islamic concept of fard kifayah (collective duty) is relevant: when a community need exists that no one is meeting, the obligation to meet it falls on every capable member until it is met.

17.8 The Physician as Advocate

Every physician is both a clinician and a participant in the social systems that produce or prevent health. The physician's unique combination of scientific expertise, social trust, and proximity to the consequences of policy gives them a special standing to advocate for conditions that support population health. Advocacy takes several forms: clinical advocacy (addressing social determinants of health in the clinical encounter — asking about food security, housing stability, domestic safety); institutional advocacy (participating in hospital governance to promote patient rights and equity of access); policy advocacy (using clinical expertise to contribute to public debates on health policy); and community advocacy (engaging with the communities physicians serve, particularly underserved communities).

The Islamic concept of amr bil ma'ruf wa nahy 'an al-munkar (الأمر بالمعروف والنهي عن المنكر — commanding good and forbidding evil) provides an explicit religious mandate for advocacy: the Muslim physician is obligated not only to treat disease but to work toward the social conditions that prevent it.

17.9 Islamic Foundations of Public Health Ethics

Islam has a rich tradition of public health practice. Prophetic quarantine: The Prophet's guidance on quarantine during plague established one of the earliest and most effective public health protocols in history — anticipating by fourteen centuries the modern epidemiological understanding of communicable disease control. Environmental health: The Prophet commanded cleanliness (al-nazafah min al-iman — "Cleanliness is part of faith") and prohibited practices that contaminate shared resources — polluting water sources, leaving waste in public places.

Preventive medicine as religious duty: The Prophetic hadith "Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness..." (al-Hakim) and "There is no disease Allah has created, except that He also has created its treatment" (Bukhari) together establish both the obligation to maintain health and the legitimacy of preventive medicine as a religious practice. Collective responsibility: The Quranic injunction to "cooperate in righteousness and piety" (Al-Ma'idah 5:2) provides the foundation for the collective action that public health requires.

For Postgraduate Trainees — your public-health duties: Beyond the individual patient you carry population-level obligations: report notifiable diseases promptly, follow infection-control and outbreak protocols, and support honest public communication. In a surge or crisis, triage and allocation must follow pre-declared institutional standards applied by a designated team — a junior should never make rationing decisions alone at the bedside. Escalate resource-allocation dilemmas rather than improvising them.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 16.1 — The Unvaccinated Child

A 7-year-old child is brought to the emergency department with measles. Her parents, citing religious concerns, have refused all vaccinations since birth. The child is severely ill. During admission, the ward nurse informs you that three other children in the same ward are immunocompromised and unable to be vaccinated. What public health obligations arise? How do you engage with the parents? What are the obligations to the other vulnerable children?

Case 16.2 — The Contact Tracing Refusal

During a tuberculosis outbreak, a patient with active pulmonary TB refuses to provide the names of his close contacts, citing privacy concerns. Contact tracing is essential to prevent further transmission. What ethical principles are in conflict? What legal and public health obligations apply in Saudi Arabia? How do you proceed?

Case 16.3 — The Screening Dilemma

A primary care clinic is considering introducing routine PSA screening for all male patients over 50. Evidence shows that PSA screening reduces prostate cancer mortality in some populations but leads to significant overdiagnosis, unnecessary biopsies, and treatment of cancers that would never have caused symptoms. Apply the Wilson-Jungner criteria. Is this screening program ethically justified? What information must patients receive before consenting to screening?

Case 16.4 — The Social Determinant

A 45-year-old woman presents with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes. Her HbA1c has risen despite medication compliance. Further questioning reveals she has recently lost her job, is food insecure, and cannot afford the fresh vegetables recommended in her dietary plan. Apply the social determinants framework. What clinical actions are appropriate? What advocacy obligations does this encounter create?

References

• Al-Bar, M. A., & Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). Contemporary bioethics: Islamic perspective. Springer.

• American Public Health Association. (2019). Public health code of ethics (Revised 2022). APHA.

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. (Chapter 10)

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Module 13)

Kirkpatrick, J. N., Hull, S. C., Fedson, S., Mullen, B., & Goodlin, S. J. (2020). Scarce-resource allocation and patient triage during the COVID-19 pandemic: JACC review topic of the week. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 76(1), 85–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2020.05.006

Savulescu, J., Persson, I., & Wilkinson, D. (2020). Utilitarianism and the pandemic. Bioethics, 34(6), 620–632. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12771

• Wilson, J. M. G., & Jungner, G. (1968). Principles and practice of screening for disease. WHO.

• World Health Organization. (2009). Module for teaching medical ethics to undergraduates. WHO-SEARO.

Chapter 18: Rules, Laws, and Regulations

For most of medical history, a physician’s conduct in the Muslim world was governed by two things: his conscience and the teachings of the Sharia. There was no statute book to consult. As modern medicine grew more powerful and more complex, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, like every modern state, found that conscience alone was not enough. In 2005, the Law of Practising Healthcare Professions was enacted by royal decree, making it unlawful to practise without a licence and setting out in formal statute the duties, liabilities, and discipline of every practitioner — building on the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties established in 1992. This chapter introduces the rules, laws, and regulations that bind the physician working in Saudi Arabia today.

18.1 Why Regulations Matter: The Link Between Law and Ethics

Throughout this book, the distinction between law and ethics has been maintained: ethics sets the standard for what ought to be done; law enforces a minimum standard of what must not be done. Ethics often demands more than law requires, and occasionally ethics requires deviation from law when the law demands unethical conduct. Yet this distinction should not obscure the profound interdependence of law and ethics in medical practice. Laws governing healthcare are, in their best form, the codification of ethical principles — the translation of values like patient autonomy, non-maleficence, and professional accountability into enforceable obligations.

18.2 The Regulatory Ecosystem: Key Bodies in Saudi Healthcare

The Ministry of Health (MOH)

The Ministry of Health is the primary governmental body responsible for healthcare policy, planning, and delivery across Saudi Arabia. Its regulatory functions include: issuing licenses to practice healthcare professions through regional health directorates; establishing and enforcing standards for healthcare facilities; publishing the Saudi Patient Bill of Rights and Responsibilities; operating the national system of public health surveillance and communicable disease control; and managing the majority of public hospitals and primary healthcare centers. The MOH complaint hotline (937) provides a mechanism through which patients and practitioners can report concerns.

The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS)

Established in 1992, the SCFHS is the independent body responsible for regulating and developing healthcare specialties in Saudi Arabia. Its functions include: licensing and registration (all healthcare practitioners must be registered before practicing); classification (practitioners are classified at different levels — residency, fellow, consultant — based on qualifications and experience); Continuing Medical Education (CME) requirements for maintaining registration; publishing and enforcing the Code of Ethics for Healthcare Practitioners; disciplinary procedures (the SCFHS can suspend or revoke registration); and administering Saudi Board programs across all specialties.

The Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA)

The SFDA regulates drugs, food, biological products, medical devices, and cosmetics. Its functions include: licensing new pharmaceutical products; pharmacovigilance (post-market surveillance of drug safety); and regulation of clinical trials involving new therapeutic agents.

18.3 The Law of Practicing Healthcare Professions (Royal Decree M/59)

Royal Decree No. M/59, dated 04/11/1426H (2005) and its implementing regulations (Ministerial Resolution 4080489, 1439H/2018) constitute the primary legal framework for healthcare practice in Saudi Arabia. Article 2 specifies that practicing any healthcare profession without a license is strictly forbidden. The conditions for obtaining a license are: a recognized qualification from an accredited institution recognized by the SCFHS; completion of mandatory internship as prescribed by the SCFHS; medical fitness; a clean criminal record (no prior conviction for crimes against honor or honesty unless rehabilitated); and formal SCFHS registration.

Key Practitioner Obligations

Practice within scope (practitioners must practice only within the scope of their qualifications and licensing — practicing outside one's licensed scope is both illegal and unethical); maintain medical records (accurate, complete, and timely medical records must be kept for the minimum period specified); report serious adverse events; obtain informed consent before medical procedures; comply with CME requirements; and cooperate with regulatory oversight.

Disciplinary Provisions

Graduated disciplinary measures include: warning (for minor violations); temporary suspension of practice license; permanent revocation (for severe or repeated violations); financial penalties in defined circumstances; and referral to criminal prosecution where the violation constitutes a criminal offence. Disciplinary proceedings are primarily about patient protection, not punishment.

18.4 The SCFHS Code of Ethics: Key Chapters

The SCFHS Code of Ethics (2014) is a legally binding document grounding professional ethics in Islamic values. Chapter 1 (Healthcare Practitioner Ethics) covers: devotion and worship (the practitioner's work is an act of service to Allah — motivating the highest standard of conduct even in the absence of external oversight); best of manners (husn al-akhlaq in all professional interactions); self-accountability (muhasabah — reviewing one's own conduct and committing to continuous improvement).

Saudi practice is also being reshaped by the Vision 2030 Health Sector Transformation Program. Telemedicine has expanded rapidly — the Seha Virtual Hospital, launched in 2022, links hospitals across the Kingdom to specialist expertise as one of the largest virtual hospitals in the world — raising regulatory and ethical questions about licensing, consent, data protection, and equitable digital access that trainees will increasingly encounter (Shujaat et al., 2026).

Chapter 2 (Duties Towards Patients) establishes: good treatment and respect for patient dignity; achieving the patient's interests; honesty and truth-telling; maintaining confidentiality; respecting patient autonomy; proper consent and disclosure; non-abandonment of patients. Chapter 3 (Duties Towards Society) includes: serving the community's health needs; contributing to public health, disease prevention, and health education; and maintaining the honor of the profession in the public eye. Chapter 4 (Duties Towards Professional Colleagues) includes: respectful professional relationships; supporting colleagues' development; and reporting unsafe or unethical conduct through appropriate channels.

18.5 The Internship Year: Regulatory and Ethical Framework

The internship year is the mandatory practical training year following graduation with an MBBS degree — a period of transition during which the graduate gains supervised clinical experience across the major specialties before becoming fully licensed. Interns are graduates of medical school holding an MBBS degree but are not yet licensed by the SCFHS. They may perform clinical tasks under supervision; they may not practice independently without supervision; and they are not authorized to sign clinical documents as the responsible physician.

The ethical obligations of interns include: practicing within supervision (the willingness to say "I need supervision for this" is a mark of professional maturity, not weakness); honest documentation (clinical records must be accurate, complete, and honest — including documentation of uncertainty and of supervisor involvement); escalation (when an intern encounters a situation beyond their competence or recognizes a patient deteriorating, they must escalate promptly); and maintaining patient confidentiality (interns must sign a confidentiality agreement as part of the internship program).

Residency and postgraduate training. After internship, most trainees enter a structured residency program accredited by the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS). The same ethical architecture applies, scaled up: residents carry greater clinical responsibility, supervise and teach juniors, and are bound by the SCFHS training regulations governing registration, rotations, assessment, working hours, and professional conduct. A resident's professionalism is formally assessed — lapses such as dishonest documentation, absence without cover, mistreatment of juniors or students, or breaches of patient safety can delay progression, trigger remediation, or, in serious cases, lead to dismissal from the program and referral to the SCFHS. The willingness to be supervised, to escalate, and to teach honestly does not end with the internship year; it deepens throughout training.

18.6 Institutional Conduct and Training Regulations

Every training institution publishes a charter of trainee rights and obligations. Whatever its exact wording, such charters typically establish: attendance (mandatory requirements apply to lectures, tutorials, and clinical sessions, and for postgraduate trainees to rotations and on-call duties — unexcused absence carries academic or training consequences); dress code (professional attire consistent with Islamic modesty standards and hospital requirements); academic and professional integrity (violations carry consequences ranging from a grade of zero or a formal warning to dismissal); and examination or assessment regulations. You are responsible for knowing the specific rules of the institution in which you train.

Institutions maintain a graduated disciplinary system: warning (informal or formal); recorded reprimand (documented in the trainee's file); suspension (from examinations, rotations, or a defined period); and dismissal (for serious or repeated violations). Trainees should understand that academic and professional misconduct during training can have consequences that extend beyond the institution — the SCFHS may consider a history of documented misconduct when assessing fitness to practise.

18.7 Medical Malpractice: Legal and Ethical Dimensions

Medical malpractice is professional negligence — the failure of a healthcare practitioner to meet the standard of care, resulting in patient harm. For a successful malpractice claim, the plaintiff must establish the four Ds: Duty (a doctor-patient relationship existed, creating a duty of care); Deviation (the practitioner deviated from the accepted standard of care); Damage (the patient suffered harm); and Direct causation (the deviation directly caused the damage). All four elements must be present. A bad outcome does not constitute malpractice if the standard of care was met.

Ethical Response to Medical Error

Medical errors are inevitable in a complex system operating under time pressure with incomplete information. The ethical response to error is not concealment but: disclosure to the patient (patients who have been harmed by medical error have a right to honest information about what happened); apology (a genuine, compassionate apology is both ethically appropriate and often more important to patients than legal proceedings); reporting (significant adverse events should be reported through the hospital's incident reporting system to enable learning); and remediation (identifying and addressing the factors that contributed to the error).

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 17.1 — The Unlicensed Practice

A newly graduated Saudi physician, awaiting his SCFHS registration to be processed, is approached by a relative who asks him to prescribe medication for a family member with a chronic condition. He has the clinical knowledge to manage the condition. Is he legally and ethically permitted to prescribe? What are the risks — clinical, legal, and professional? What should he do?

Case 17.2 — The Falsified Record

During a ward round, a consultant discovers that an intern has documented a neurological examination that — based on the clinical timeline — could not have been performed. When confronted, the intern admits that the examination was documented before it was performed because "it was going to be done anyway." What legal and ethical obligations have been violated? What should the consultant do? What consequences may the intern face?

Case 17.3 — The Complaint

A patient submits a formal complaint alleging that a physician refused to see her after she arrived late for an appointment, despite the fact that she had traveled two hours and was in pain. The physician argues that his clinic schedule does not permit late patients. What regulatory obligations apply? Through what process should the complaint be investigated? What are the potential outcomes?

Case 17.4 — The Scope Violation

A general practitioner working at a primary health center performs a joint injection — technically within his training but for which he is not specifically credentialed at this facility. The patient develops a complication. Analyze this scenario using the 4 Ds of malpractice. What ethical and legal obligations were involved in the initial decision? What should happen now?

References

• Al-Jarallah, J. (2021). Akhlaqiyyat al-tibb [Medical ethics] (أخلاقيات الطب).

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Module 6: Medical Malpractice)

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (2005). Law of practicing healthcare professions (Royal Decree M/59; updated 1439H/2018).

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (n.d.). Patient bill of rights and responsibilities.

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners.

Shujaat, S., Almutairi, H., Alhuraibi, S. H., & Ma, H. (2026). Policy considerations for national virtual hospitals: Global evidence and the Seha Virtual Hospital model. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 28, e89276. https://doi.org/10.2196/89276

Chapter 19: The Pharmaceutical Industry, Private Sector, and Healthcare Ethics

In the late 1950s, a German company marketed a new sedative, sold as a safe remedy for the morning sickness of pregnancy. It was a catastrophe: thalidomide crossed the placenta and caused thousands of babies to be born with malformed or missing limbs. In the United States, the disaster was largely averted by a single official, Frances Oldham Kelsey, who — under heavy commercial pressure — refused to approve the drug without better evidence of its safety. The scandal transformed the law, requiring companies to prove that medicines are both safe and effective before sale. It exposed a permanent tension: the pharmaceutical industry does immense good, yet its commercial interests can collide with patients’ welfare. This chapter examines how to manage that conflict honestly.

19.1 Medicine as Commerce: The Unavoidable Tension

Healthcare is not a normal commodity. The patient who needs treatment is not a customer with negotiating power; they are a person in need who must trust the practitioner to act in their interest regardless of financial incentive. The growth of the private healthcare sector in Saudi Arabia — parallel to the public MOH system — and the deep involvement of the pharmaceutical and medical device industry in clinical practice have created financial relationships that can, if unmanaged, compromise the primacy of patient welfare.

Empirical evidence consistently links industry payments to prescribing. Analyses of the US Open Payments database show a dose-response association between even small payments from manufacturers and increased prescribing of the sponsor's branded product — demonstrated for branded prostaglandin eye-drops and for a branded memantine–donepezil combination (Marcum et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2022). The lesson for trainees is that the influence of gifts and payments operates below conscious awareness, so the safest professional stance is transparency and minimisation, not confidence in one's own immunity.

The SCFHS Code of Ethics addresses this directly: "With the increase in the growth of the private sector in the provision of health services, the general direction towards privatization and the application of health insurance along with the spread of health insurance companies; healthcare practitioners have become actively tangled in the for-profit health sector. This could be followed by commercial competition that could lead to attitudes that could breach the ethics of the healthcare profession."

19.2 How Industry Influences Physician Behavior

The mechanisms of pharmaceutical industry influence are multiple and mutually reinforcing: gifts and hospitality (branded promotional items, meals, sponsored educational events, travel to conferences — research consistently shows that physicians who receive such gifts are more likely to prescribe the promoted product even when they sincerely believe the gift has not influenced them); CME sponsorship (industry sponsors a significant proportion of CME programs globally — even when sponsors are prohibited from controlling content, the framing of educational events and the choice of topics favor the sponsor's therapeutic area); research funding and publication bias (as discussed in Chapter 14, industry-funded trials consistently produce more favorable outcomes for the sponsored product); and pharmaceutical detailing (one-on-one visits from sales representatives that significantly influence prescribing patterns).

Research demonstrates three consistent findings: (1) industry interactions influence physician prescribing in measurable ways; (2) physicians systematically underestimate the influence of industry on their own behavior; and (3) the effects are present even for small, inexpensive gifts. The second finding is the most troubling: it means that subjective confidence that "I'm not influenced" is not a reliable guide to actual influence.

19.3 The SCFHS Code on Gifts and Benefits

Clearly Prohibited: Bribes

The SCFHS Code states: "Any form of bribe whose intention is to conceal truth or the realization of a void, should not be taken or given, whether in the form of financial, in-kind, loans, equipment and so forth, regardless whether they were cheap or expensive. Bribery is one of the major sins that the Islamic Sharia has prohibited." A bribe in the medical context is any benefit given or received with the expectation — explicit or implicit — of influencing a clinical decision for commercial rather than clinical reasons.

Prohibited in Practice: Expensive Gifts

"What is not apparently a bribe, but was in the form of expensive cash or in-kind gifts, should not be accepted, whatever the motives and justifications, as it would most probably be intended for illegitimate purposes." Expensive gifts from commercial entities — regardless of the giver's stated justification — are prohibited because their function is almost certainly to create obligation and influence.

Permissible with Conditions: Minor Items

"The inexpensive gifts that people usually exchange among themselves as an expression of passion and cordiality like pens, scientific books, medical journals, or similar are considered less strictly, unless the healthcare practitioner feels an effect on him/herself in relation to his/her attitudes and medical decisions towards the presenter of the gift." Even apparently minor gifts are prohibited if the practitioner notices they are affecting their clinical decisions.

Corporate Gifts: Stricter Standard

"It is not permissible for the healthcare practitioner, whether in the public or private sector, to accept gifts that are linked to the number of prescriptions that he/she prescribes or the number of equipments he/she advises his/her patients to have." This explicitly prohibits prescription-linked bonuses. "It is not permissible for the healthcare practitioner to accept gifts, loans, equipment, instruments, or cash paid directly to him/her personally from the commercial companies for whatever justification."

19.4 The Islamic Framework for Industry Ethics

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "The curse of Allah be upon the one who gives a bribe and the one who receives it." (Ahmad, Abu Dawud). Rishwa (رشوة) encompasses any payment or benefit given to influence a judgment that should be made impartially. The physician who prescribes for financial benefit rather than clinical need is giving patients the judgment they paid for, not the judgment they need — a violation of both amanah (trust) and 'adl (justice).

Taghrir (غرر — deception in a transaction) is prohibited in Islamic commercial law. A physician who prescribes an expensive branded drug when a cheaper equivalent would be equally effective, without informing the patient, is engaging in a form of taghrir. Bara'a al-dhimma (براءة الذمة — freedom from obligation) is valued in Islam: when a physician accepts a gift from a commercial entity, they create an obligation — even an unconscious one — toward the giver. The physician who is in no one's commercial debt is free to prescribe solely for the patient's benefit.

19.5 Ethics of Medical Advertising

The SCFHS Code prohibits: claims of superiority over other practitioners or demeaning of competitors' abilities; claiming skills, qualifications, or services for which the practitioner is not competent or authorized; adding false or unauthentic titles or qualifications; exploiting patients' lack of medical knowledge to make misleading claims; and guaranteeing cures for diseases. When participating in media, practitioners must: refrain from advertising oneself or one's workplace; provide only professionally authentic and scientifically acceptable information; and clearly identify personal opinions that differ from accepted professional standards.

19.6 Dual Practice: Public and Private Sector Ethics

Many Saudi physicians work in both the public (government) and private sectors simultaneously. This creates specific ethical risks: time and attention diversion; patient diversion (using the public sector position as a platform to attract patients to the private clinic); inequitable care (treating private patients more promptly or attentively than public patients); and conflict of interest in referrals (referring patients to one's own private facility).

The SCFHS Code specifies: "His/her work in the private sector does not affect his/her governmental work, and his/her basic governmental job should be given its due diligence." "His/her work in the public sector should not be used as a means/bridge to his/her private work, for example, by attracting patients to his/her private practice." "The healthcare practitioner should not under any circumstance give priority to his/her personal interests, financially or socially, above the interests of the patient."

19.7 Healthcare Fees, Insurance Ethics, and Financial Exploitation

The SCFHS Code establishes: practitioners are entitled to fair fees equivalent to the going rate; "It is not permissible to exaggerate in the set fees, or abuse the patient's condition to achieve material or moral benefit"; and "It is not permissible to expose the patient to investigations or medical procedures for the purpose of increasing the amount to be paid without a clear medical indication." This provision addresses one of the most common forms of financial exploitation in healthcare: ordering unnecessary tests, referrals, and procedures driven by financial incentive rather than clinical need.

Health insurance creates specific ethical obligations: the physician must not provide false information to insurance companies — either to secure unjustified coverage for patients or to falsely deny legitimate claims; must not inflate claims, fabricate diagnoses, or misrepresent services; and must not allow insurance coverage decisions to compromise the standard of care. The physician who participates in insurance fraud violates the law, their professional obligations, and the Islamic prohibition on deception (ghish, غش).

For Postgraduate Trainees — you are the target: Residents and junior doctors are the prime focus of pharmaceutical detailing, sponsored meals, and 'educational' gifts, precisely because prescribing habits form early; evidence shows even small gifts shift prescribing below conscious awareness. Decline or minimise gifts, disclose any industry relationship, rely on independent evidence rather than sales materials, and prescribe by generic name. In dual public–private settings, never let referral or billing incentives sway a clinical decision.

Key Terms

Case Vignettes for Discussion

Case 18.1 — The Conference Invitation

A pharmaceutical company invites you, as a specialist, to an international conference. They will cover all travel, accommodation, and conference fees. In exchange, they ask you to attend a symposium featuring their new drug and to "share your experience" with the drug at your institution. Is this an acceptable arrangement? What does the SCFHS Code say? What conditions, if any, would make acceptance ethical?

Case 18.2 — The Private Clinic Referral

A consultant physician who works full-time at a government hospital has a private clinic on Thursday afternoons. During a morning ward round at the hospital, he sees a patient who needs an elective procedure. He tells the patient: "You could wait four months for this here, or I can see you at my clinic this Thursday and we can schedule it much sooner." Is this ethically acceptable? What principles does it violate? What should the consultant do instead?

Case 18.3 — The Branded Prescription

A patient presents with hypertension. A well-established, inexpensive generic ACE inhibitor would be the evidence-based first-line treatment. However, the physician recently attended a dinner sponsored by a pharmaceutical company promoting a newer, more expensive branded ARB. The physician prescribes the branded ARB. The patient has no insurance and will pay out of pocket. What ethical issues arise? What should the physician have considered before prescribing?

Case 18.4 — The Insurance Claim

A patient presents with a condition that requires a specific investigation. The patient's insurance does not cover this investigation but does cover a more expensive alternative that provides similar information. The patient asks: "Can you put on the form that I need the expensive one? It's covered and it basically does the same thing." What are the physician's legal and ethical obligations? What should they say to the patient?

References

• Al-Jarallah, J. (2021). Akhlaqiyyat al-tibb [Medical ethics] (أخلاقيات الطب).

• American College of Physicians. (2019). ACP ethics manual (7th ed.). (Sections on Conflicts of Interest)

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• Hussein, G. M., Alkabba, A. F., & Kasule, O. H. (2015). Professionalism and ethics handbook for residents. SCFHS. (Module 10)

Marcum, Z. A., Chang, C.-Y., Barthold, D., Holmes, H. M., & Lo-Ciganic, W.-H. (2021). Industry payments to physicians and prescribing branded memantine and donepezil combination. Neurology: Clinical Practice, 11(3), 181–187. https://doi.org/10.1212/CPJ.0000000000000870

• Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (2005). Law of practicing healthcare professions (Royal Decree M/59).

Nguyen, A. M., Anderson, K. E., Anderson, G., & Johnson, T. V. (2022). Association between Open Payments-reported industry transfers of value and prostaglandin analog prescribing in the US. JAMA Ophthalmology, 140(9), 855–862. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2022.2757

• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties. (2014). Code of ethics for healthcare practitioners. (Chapter 10: Ethics of Financial Affairs)

Appendix A: Key International Declarations and Codes

The Hippocratic Oath (Classical Version — Excerpt)

"I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course... Whatever I see or hear, professionally or privately, which ought not to be divulged, I will keep secret and tell no one."

The Nuremberg Code (1947) — Ten Principles (Summary)

1. Voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

2. The experiment should yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods.

3. The experiment should be based on prior animal experimentation and knowledge of the disease under study.

4. All unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury should be avoided.

5. No experiment should be conducted if there is reason to believe it will cause death or disabling injury.

6. The degree of risk should never exceed the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved.

7. Proper preparations and facilities should be provided to protect the experimental subject.

8. Only scientifically qualified persons should conduct the experiment.

9. The human subject should be free to end their participation at any time.

10. The scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage if continuation appears likely to cause harm.

Declaration of Helsinki (1964; 2024 revision) — Key Principles (Summary)

• Respect for the individual and their right to self-determination and to make informed decisions.

• The primary purpose of medical research involving human subjects is to understand the causes, development, and effects of diseases and improve preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions.

• While the primary purpose of medical research is to generate new knowledge, this goal can never take precedence over the rights and interests of individual research subjects.

• Independent ethics committee review before commencement of research is required.

• Risks and burdens to research subjects must be minimized, and benefits must clearly outweigh risks.

• Both positive and negative results must be published or otherwise made publicly available.

Vulnerable groups and individuals are entitled to specifically considered protection — an emphasis strengthened in the 2024 revision.

The Belmont Report (1979) — Three Principles

1. Respect for Persons: Individuals should be treated as autonomous agents; those with diminished autonomy are entitled to protection.

2. Beneficence: Do not harm; maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harms.

3. Justice: The benefits and burdens of research should be distributed fairly.

Declaration of Geneva (WMA, 2017 Revision) — Full Text

"AS A MEMBER OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION: I SOLEMNLY PLEDGE to dedicate my life to the service of humanity; THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF MY PATIENT will be my first consideration; I WILL RESPECT the autonomy and dignity of my patient; I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life; I WILL NOT PERMIT considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient; I WILL RESPECT the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died; I WILL PRACTISE my profession with conscience and dignity and in accordance with good medical practice; I WILL FOSTER the honour and noble traditions of the medical profession; I WILL GIVE to my teachers, colleagues, and students the respect and gratitude that is their due; I WILL SHARE my medical knowledge for the benefit of the patient and the advancement of healthcare; I WILL ATTEND TO my own health, well-being, and abilities in order to provide care of the highest standard; I WILL NOT USE my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat; I MAKE THESE PROMISES solemnly, freely, and upon my honour."

Appendix B: SCFHS Code of Ethics — Summary

The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties Code of Ethics for Healthcare Practitioners (2014) is a legally binding document governing the conduct of all registered healthcare practitioners in Saudi Arabia. The following is a structured summary of its key provisions.

Chapter 1: Healthcare Practitioner Ethics

• Devotion and feeling the worship of Allah — the practitioner's work is an act of service and worship.

• Demonstration of the best of manners (husn al-akhlaq) in all professional interactions.

• Self-accountability (muhasabah) — regular review of one's own conduct and commitment to improvement.

• Avoidance of trivialities and conduct that demeans the dignity of the profession.

Chapter 2: Duties Towards Patients

• Good treatment and respect for patient dignity regardless of condition, nationality, religion, or social status.

• Acting in the patient's genuine interest — not influenced by financial or personal considerations.

• Obtaining proper informed consent before any procedure.

• Reassuring the patient and maintaining therapeutic hope without deception.

• Maintaining complete patient confidentiality — not disclosing information except with consent or as required by law.

• Not photographing patients or recording their voices without explicit consent.

• Respecting the patient's right to refuse treatment.

• Acknowledging the right to conscientious objection while ensuring continuity of patient care.

Chapter 3: Duties Towards Community

• Serving the health needs of the wider community, not only the individual patient.

• Contributing to health promotion, disease prevention, and health education.

• Reporting communicable diseases and public health hazards as required by law.

• Participating in the training of the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Chapter 4: Duties Towards Professional Colleagues

• Maintaining respectful, collegial, and professional relationships with all colleagues.

• Reporting unsafe or unethical conduct by a colleague to the responsible authority.

• Not undermining a colleague's professional reputation unfairly.

• Cooperating with consultations and referrals promptly and professionally.

Chapter 10: Ethics of Financial Affairs (Key Provisions)

• Practitioners are entitled to fair fees equivalent to the going rate; exaggeration of fees is prohibited.

• Performing investigations or procedures for the purpose of increasing payment without medical indication is prohibited.

• Bribes — in any form — are absolutely prohibited (one of the major sins in Islamic Sharia).

• Expensive gifts from commercial entities are prohibited regardless of the justification given.

• Prescription-linked bonuses from pharmaceutical companies are prohibited.

• Direct personal gifts from commercial companies in any form are prohibited.

• In dual practice, public sector obligations must be fully met and must not be used to attract patients to private practice.

• Healthcare advertising must be accurate, must not demean competitors, and must not claim unauthorized skills or qualifications.

Appendix C: Ethical Decision-Making Frameworks

The Four-Topic (Jonsen-Siegler-Winslade) Framework

The four-topic framework is the most widely used systematic approach to clinical ethics case analysis. Apply it in the following sequence:

Topic 1: Medical Indications (Beneficence and Non-maleficence)

• What is the patient's medical problem? Is it acute, chronic, critical, or reversible?

• What are the goals of treatment: cure, palliation, rehabilitation, or comfort?

• What are the benefits and harms of each treatment option?

• What happens if no treatment is given?

• Is there a point at which further treatment is futile?

Topic 2: Patient Preferences (Autonomy)

• Has the patient been informed about their condition and options in an understandable way?

• Does the patient have the capacity to make this decision?

• What are the patient's expressed preferences? What do they value most?

• Has the patient made any advance directives?

• If the patient lacks capacity, who is the appropriate surrogate decision-maker?

Topic 3: Quality of Life (Beneficence, Non-maleficence, and Autonomy)

• What are the prospects for returning to the patient's normal life with and without treatment?

• What physical, psychological, social, or spiritual burdens does the proposed treatment impose?

• How does the patient define quality of life for themselves?

• Are there biases that might affect the clinical team's assessment of the patient's quality of life?

Topic 4: Contextual Features (Justice)

• Are there family members whose interests or preferences bear on the decision?

• Are there institutional policies, legal requirements, or resource constraints that affect the options?

• Are there conflicts of interest — financial, professional, or personal — that might influence the clinical team's recommendations?

• Are there cultural or religious factors relevant to the clinical team or the patient?

The Islamic Ethics Supplement

After applying the four-topic framework, ask these additional questions:

1. Is there a relevant Quranic verse, Prophetic hadith, or established jurisprudential rule (qa'idah fiqhiyyah) that applies directly to this situation?

2. Does the Islamic framework converge with or diverge from the secular bioethical analysis? If it diverges, how should the divergence be navigated? (Recall the operative rule from Chapter 1: in Saudi practice, the Kingdom's law and the rulings of the Council of Senior Scholars are binding boundaries within which the four principles are weighed.)

3. Does the principle of darura (necessity) apply — is there a genuine necessity that permits an otherwise restricted act?

4. Does the maqasid al-shari'ah framework (preservation of life, intellect, progeny, wealth, and religion) help clarify the priority of competing considerations?

5. Are there Islamic scholarly rulings (fatawa) from recognized authorities (such as the Islamic Fiqh Council, the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, or the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences) that address this specific scenario?

Quick Reference: The Six-Step Process

1. Identify: What are the ethical issues in this case?

2. Gather: What are the clinical facts, patient preferences, quality of life considerations, and contextual features?

3. Analyze: What do the four principles say? What does the Islamic framework say? Where do they agree and disagree?

4. Deliberate: What options are available? What are the consequences and moral implications of each?

5. Decide: What is the most defensible course of action given all the considerations?

6. Justify: Can you clearly articulate why this course of action is ethically preferable to the alternatives?

Appendix D: Glossary of Key Terms

This glossary provides concise definitions of key terms used throughout this guide. Arabic terms are provided with transliteration and English translation. Entries are arranged alphabetically.

Appendix E: List of Abbreviations