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Ethics is a moral code. All are required to comply with the law, but just to be within the law is not sufficient for the acceptable practice of medicine. The purpose of a code of ethics in medicine is to protect the patient, and it was to this end that the American Academy of Ophthalmology created its Code of Ethics.
The concept of what is ethical varies with the individual. A code of ethics for ophthalmology should embody the ethical concepts of ophthalmologists in general. To accomplish this, several open discussions took place at the American Academy so that the resultant code reflected those opinions and was not only the creation of a committee.
Codes of ethics have existed since the time of Hippocrates in the fourth century B.C., and many codes have been written since then. Little attention is paid to such codes, and physicians may be unaware of their existence. For this reason sanctions were incorporated in the ophthalmology code of the Academy as a deterrent to transgressors.
The essence of the Academy's code, and the question asked throughout its development, was "Is it for the good of the...