Military Medical Ethics & the United States: An Overview of Recent Developments in the Operationalized Landscape

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, there has been increasing academic attention focused on military medical ethics. The fields of bioethics, professional ethics, and political science (among others) have begun to analyze the contexts of the military institution and the conflict zone, considering how the risks (and other features) inherent in these settings may complicate moral decisions for those agents involved. The institutional purpose of the military and the context of deployment present risks and austerity that are rarely paralleled in civilian medicine. In recognition of this, militaries have begun including ethical principles in formal doctrine and establishing collaborations with subject matter experts in the field. However, little attention has been paid to how these discussions have been operationalized in the military itself. This chapter offers an overview of the ways in which different international organizations have included ethical discussion related to military medicine in policy, and how these have then been interpreted and applied to both programming and practice within the United States Department of Defense (US DoD). Recently, the US DoD has taken purposeful steps to explicitly develop policy and programming related to military medical ethics—including the publication of Military Health System (MHS) Principles of Medical Ethics and the establishment of the Defense Medical Ethics Center (DMEC). These developments will be the focus of this chapter.KeywordsMilitary medical ethicsPolicyBioethicsApplied ethics