The four common bioethical principles The principle of justice
could be described as the moral obligation to act on the basis
of fair adjudication between competing claims. As such, it is
linked to fairness, entitlement and equality. In health care
ethics, this can be subdivided into three categories: fair
distribution of scarce resources (distributive justice), respect
for people’s rights (rights based justice) and respect for
morally acceptable laws (legal justice) (Gillon, 1994).
Alperovitch et al. (2009) describe two elements of the principle
of justice, namely equality and equity. The right to be treated
equally, and in some cases equal access to treatment, can be
found in many constitutions, but in actual practice, a number of
different factors may influence actual access to treatment e.g.
age, place of residence, social status, ethnic background,
culture, sexual preferences, disability, legal capacity,
hospital budgets, insurance cover and prognosis. The Swiss
Academy of Medical Sciences recently repor