Professional Integrity and Screening Tests

摘要

While I concur that the conclusions reached in the target article by Burger and Kass (2009) in this issue are essentially on target, the authors glossed over an important consideration in ethics and screening: the claim of professional integrity. The claim of professional integrity allows for the rejection of a patient’s claim to testing by the clinician, based on the violation of a professional standard or the lack of any tenable benefit using best evidence-based medicine (EBM) (Doukas et al. 1997; Pellegrino and Thomasma 1993).