Fundamentals of Medical Ethics — A New Perspective Series

This editorial inaugurates NEJM’s new series on medical ethics, highlighting how advances in medicine continually generate ethical challenges. It revisits milestones such as the 1962 hemodialysis triage committee and the Tuskegee syphilis study, which prompted regulatory reform. The authors examine dilemmas involving the definition of death, research ethics, genomic privacy, artificial intelligence, informed consent, and equitable inclusion of vulnerable populations in trials. They emphasize that judgments in ethics cannot be resolved solely through biomedical evidence but require multidisciplinary reasoning that respects diverse moral and cultural values. The series aims to guide stakeholders, physicians, patients, researchers, and policymakers toward a responsive and inclusive ethical practice as medicine evolves.

This editorial inaugurates NEJM’s new series on medical ethics, highlighting how advances in medicine continually generate ethical challenges. It revisits milestones such as the 1962 hemodialysis triage committee and the Tuskegee syphilis study, which prompted regulatory reform. The authors examine dilemmas involving the definition of death, research ethics, genomic privacy, artificial intelligence, informed consent, and equitable inclusion of vulnerable populations in trials. They emphasize that judgments in ethics cannot be resolved solely through biomedical evidence but require multidisciplinary reasoning that respects diverse moral and cultural values. The series aims to guide stakeholders, physicians, patients, researchers, and policymakers toward a responsive and inclusive ethical practice as medicine evolves.