The Brazilian Code of Medical Ethics: Ethical and bioethical limits
Abstract
The technological and scientific evolution has imposed challenges on society and especially on medicine. Changes in the doctor-patient relationship and among healthcare professionals require new regulatory formats to such relationships. The current Brazilian Code of Medical Ethics adopts the principialist North
American model as a universal ethical framework, based on autonomy that is out of step with the emerging bioethics in Latin America, whose theoretical assumptions on the plurality of moral subjects and multi-intertransdisciplinarity
are oriented to public health and the defense of the most vulnerable. The text reflects on the historical aspects that organize professions and their codes, and on the reasons for the gap in the evolution of bioethics in Brazil and the revision of the code. Equally, the text considers the contemporary challenges to
the medical authority, which imposes the extension of the ethical debate to draft more democratic formats of professional codes, considering the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights as the structural axis.
