When Professional Rightness is Personal

This commentary discusses twelve stories in which physicians tell what happened when they were involved in the care of a family member. The stories display considerable differences in attitude toward the ethics and usefulness of physicians treating members of their own families. But the more significant tension is between the analytical or objective attitude that all the writers presuppose as necessary for doing good medical work, opposed to the emotions aroused by seeing a loved one suffer. The commentary explores the implications of assuming this binary opposition, whether it is correct, and how far it is actually necessary. Concluding comments discuss what kind of ethics is involved in stories that are all about dilemmas and decisions, but rarely invoke concepts from bioethics.