Page 269 - DLIS001_FOUNDATION_OF_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SCIENCE

Foundation of Library and Information Science

Notes in the 19th century. To cite examples from the United States, the Code of Ethics of the American
Medical Association (AMA) was adapted in 1848 when AMA was organised. Between 1890 and
1925, more than two hundred American Business and professional groups adopted their codes of
ethics. The legal profession adopted its first code in 1908. The teaching profession imposed
standards as guidelines for conduct in its, first code of ethics. Thus the code “was to serve more
as a control mechanism than as a support system.” Other countries have also adopted appropriate
codes to guide, various professionals.
It is of great importance to keep ethical problems under continuing scrutiny and debate through
journals, training programmes, with social scientists taking the initiative in the process; in
order to provide increasingly acceptable principles for clarifying ethical issues concerning
professional performance. Every profession has been constantly engaged in reviewing and
resetting ethical codes in order to be consistent with current professional practices and behaviour.
Since its earliest beginnings; medical practice has rested on a solid foundation of principles and
values, designed to promote and protect patients in their relationships with doctors. But this
stable relationship has been showing signs of destabilization because of scientific discoveries
and technological innovations in medical practice and the revolution in social attitudes and
behaviour, which brought medical practitioners under the scrutiny of consumer protection
courts.

Example: Within the last quarter of a century, we have developed medical facilities for
replacing organs, introduce life through surrogate motherhood, prolong life artificially using
life-support systems, conduct research in genetic engineering with potentially dramatic effects
and assemble data about people and their illnesses on a scale hitherto unimaginable.
Interest in professional, ethics has increased due to the growth of numerous occupations and
formation of new professional groups. Both legal and ethical issues are getting modified by the
changing demands of society, such as the public expectation for accountability and consumers’
demand to be informed, consulted and protected. The changing roles of the professionals, which
have come to include consulting, advising, making policy, and delivering government service,
all bring into question the extent to which existing codes provide for these complex questions.
We shall discuss in the next section how library and information service profession has evolved
its own approach to professional ethics and the formation of ethical codes.

Task Critically examine how do professional ethics get affected as a professional
occupation advances through scientific and technological applications and societal changes?

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
5. ……………… has been a subject of study and enquiry in philosophy which is as old as
human history.
6. …………………. position is the belief that there are multiple moral principles that can
correctly guide behaviour.

7. Professional ethics is considered as an expression of the ………………...
8. The legal profession adopted its first code in …………….

264 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY