If I understand the March JADA Question of the Month correctly, JADA was asking if professional ethics can be compromised by our role as business people or, more specifically, as entrepreneurs.
As I read some of the answers to the question, I was dismayed that my colleagues didn’t see the question of ethics, and our struggle with them, as present every moment of our lives. I thought to myself, "Maybe it is the cynical New Yorker in me, but I don’t see how it could be otherwise."
The focus of my comments will be on "truth-telling in dentistry," the subject of the Ethics Summit Initiative of Oral Health Organizations, held in Orlando, Jan. 20–21, 2004, and organized by the American College of Dentists.
At this conference, a broad range of organizations and leaders in dentistry participated in facilitated discussions that attempted to explore the decline in truth-telling in our profession. Please note that it was generally agreed that this is a matter of some concern and, as best as I can recall, not one of the participants took the position that truth-telling was on the rise.
One participant, an ethicist and faculty member of a prestigious university, spoke how in fact there were two ethics courses being taught: one by him, on some of the really knotty questions of providing care in an ethically challenged culture; and the other course, taught each day subliminally by the other faculty members, who by their practice and language, let students know about the "real" world of the dental profession. This ethicist was clearly frustrated, and felt he was losing the battle for the ethical center of his students.
But before we can even discuss winning or losing this battle, we have to acknowledge that we are in it. That, I think, is what dismays me about the responses to the March question.
Manufacturers of every product that we use, vendors of the wonderful technology that is available, magical software, cosmetic dental products and on and on are all looking for an edge in their marketplace, and we are the source of that edge. And yet—and this is the ethical challenge—we are also partners, and business ethics and professional ethics are not the same thing. The interplay between science and service is in flux. Our ethics shouldn’t be.
