INTRODUCTION

In 1963, “four lectures and a conference” on “issues raised through the practice of medicine” were organized by what became the London Medical Group (LMG). The subjects discussed are not recorded in the chronicle of the LMG's first 10 years (Shotter 1975a). By 1965, the LMG program comprised sixteen lectures, a conference, and study seminars on topics including abortion, sterilization, birth control, suicide, pain and the care of the dying, prolongation of life in unconscious patients, clinical experimentation, the hospital as a community, and the welfare state (Shotter 1975b). These were not yet described as “medical ethics,” which was still commonly identified with professional etiquette. During the 1970s, however, it began to be established as a term also covering an increasing number of morally and politically problematic issues in health care. “Bioethics” was and still is used more rarely in Britain, and often for issues, especially ecological and environmental, not directly related to health care.

THE ERA OF TRUSTING ATTITUDES IN DOCTORS

Before the advent of LMG, many British doctors believed that medico-moral questions “should be discussed only between medical colleagues – and in camera” (Shotter 1975b). Professional ethics was governed by the General Medical Council, a statutory but largely self-regulatory body created in 1858 (see Chapter 36), and since the turn of the century the British Medical Association (the doctors’ trade union) had a Central Ethical Committee to advise it on the subject.