This book first appeared in 1979, and was an attempt to elucidate the underlying principles of medical ethics in non-technical language. Rather than taking a topical approach to ethical issues, the authors systematically analyzed the principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice to provide an integrated framework through which diverse moral problems could be handled. For the third edition, the authors have provided new material on autonomy and informed consent, virtue, privacy, supererogation, rationing, death and dying, clinical research, AIDs and many other issues. This text has a sharper clinical focus. Many new cases have been added, and short case vignettes have been woven into the text.