The Politics of Ethics: Standard-setting in American Physicians’ Associations

• In Event: 575 - Regular Session. Voluntary Organization: Expertise and its Discontents

Abstract

American physicians’ associations, or “organized medicine,” are often derided as being “political” rather than ideological. The characterization of physicians’ associations as primarily concerned with advancing the material interests of doctors has detracted attention from other important tasks engaged in by these organizations, such as their role in the creation and dissemination of medical ethics frameworks. In this paper, I use the creation of medical ethics standards in physicians’ voluntary associations, in order to explore members’ understanding of the ideological goals of a voluntary professional organization. I draw on three years of field observation and archival research in national primary care medical associations. In recent years, primary care physicians’ associations have debated and created organizational positions on issues as varied as nuclear disarmament, gay marriage, and climate change. The breadth of these organizational policies indicates both the latitude that members ascribe to physicians’ moral authority as well as the ideological heterogeneity present in these organizations. I first describe how physicians understand authority on ethics issues to be an inherent trait of all physicians, and then focus on one debate in a single organization—that of a policy about same-sex marriage at the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)—in order to discuss the challenges that these physicians’ understanding of moral authority poses to organizational identity.

Author

• Sorcha Alexandrina Brophy, University of Pittsburgh