It's ethical, but is it legal? Teaching ethics and law in the medical school curriculum

While Western medical ethics has ancient roots in the teachings of Hippocra tes, its standing in the undergraduate medical curriculum is a distinctly m odern development. Today, all of the 127 accredited U.S. medical schools of fer formal biomedical ethics instruction, and nearly all offer instruction in the related discipline of health law. This article describes how biomedi cal ethics and health law are taught at the University of Iowa College of M edicine, one of 12 medical schools that offers separate required courses in both ethics and law. Often ethics and law overlap; often, to act ethically is to act legally. But medical students and practicing physicians also reg ularly confront dilemmas that pose the question, "Its ethical, but is it le gal?" This article discusses the goals, methods, and core themes of teachin g issues at the intersection of medicine, ethics, and law, and how the appr oach to this instruction is designed to offer students a tool kit to begin to deal effectively with these complex issues in professional life. Anat Re c (New Anat) 265: 5-9, 2001. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.