Treating Ebola, no matter the risk

In a recent piece for Huffington Post, Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan looked at the history of treating infectious diseases and the extent of ethical obligations doctors accept in their career path:

Today, in the relatively safe environment of conference rooms nestled in our major medical centers, health care professionals, bioethicists, and others are again wringing their hands over this conundrum: How should health care workers care for patients during an epidemic disease that modern medicine has not yet figured out how to effectively treat, especially when the disease in question holds a very real risk of killing both the patient and the health professional?

The current AMA Code of Ethics currently takes an "on the one hand, but on the other hand" approach to this dilemma. Physicians, the code explains, have an obligation to care for the sick, which "holds even in the face of greater than usual risks to their own safety, health or life." But it also acknowledges that the supply of physicians is not "an unlimited resource" and that doctors need to "balance immediate benefits to individual patients with ability to care for patients in the future."

Markel joins The Daily Circuit to discuss the ethics of treating infectious disease.