Abstract
Professional and legal standards are the minimum standards for practising doctors. These standards determine what doctors must not do but not what doctors must do. Ethical analysis has informed the development of professional and legal standards. The Hippocratic Oath is unthinkingly cited as central to medical practice, but an analysis of the standards it sets reveals that this is not the case. Guidance given by the formulation of standards is often general, in part because ethical analysis, even with a shared common language, may lead to different conclusions. Examples are seen in analysis of resource allocation, end of life decisions and approaches to circumcision.
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