Rights and responsibilities

As an alternative to rights theory, John Ladd proposes an ethics of responsibility based on interpersonal relationships. These relationships, described as friendships, are personal in nature, founded on trust, and obtain between doctor and patient, parent and child, etc. Ladd presents his views in a most appealing way -- helping the needy, being friends with the doctor. We argue that Ladd's ethics of responsibility is plausible only because he ignores the facts of power which rights theory was designed to take into account, and that rights and the corresponding institutional model of medicine are indeed appropriate to the physician/patient relationship.