[From service of charity to profit center? An ethical critique of commodification of medicine].

This paper wants to reflect the actual transformations of modern medicine. The implementation of the market into medicine is only possible by presupposing at least three implications: (a) the patient as consumer, (b) medical care as commodity, (c) competitiveness as criteria for good medicine. All three implications seem to be inadequate if the core identity of medicine is considered. If medicine is regarded as a human service for suffering people, it becomes clear that what medicine has to offer must be more than mere commodity. It is suggested to see medicine as a social institution which is linked to the obligation of the whole society to give medicine the possibility and the economic independence in order to remain an institution of charity which assures help for every man in need and which cannot be reduced to a mere enterprise.