maleficence

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maleficence

(mă-lĕf′ĭ-sĕns) [L. maleficentia, evildoing]

Acting in a deliberately harmful manner toward others.

Mentioned in ?

bioethics

References in periodicals archive ?

It would at first seem, of course, that inverting the values of maleficence and beneficence would not alter the underlying structure of moral exchange itself.

However, one can observe in both Sade and Smith a curious asymmetry in the relationship between beneficence and maleficence. One would expect that, for Smith, injury provokes vengeance in the same sort of closed economy in which kindness calls for gratitude.

One finds the same asymmetry between the economies of beneficence and maleficence in the text of an author who is much closer to Sade than is Adam Smith, in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld.

Sade's ethical economies

Fairfax's engagement in the prosecution of the Knaresborough witches stemmed from the mysterious illness of his daughter, Helen, who eventually attributed her condition to their maleficence. In Lancashire the zealous magistrate, Roger Nowell, "a very religious honest gentleman, painefull in the service of his Countrey", was moved by local rumours to launch an investigation.

Men and women concurred in suspecting Heard and Robinson of witchcraft, but female experience of their maleficence tended, not surprisingly, to concentrate on the interruption of domestic routines.

This latter case is not untypical of those involving several indictments in which the names of witnesses are listed: women formed a higher proportion of the witnesses to the charges of earlier maleficence than to those of more recent provenance.(27) One further pattern that emerges from the Home Circuit indictments may reinforce the suggestion that women were being mobilized by men, who were the driving force behind the decision to bring local suspicions and fears to the attention of the courts.

Women: witnesses and witches

Nevertheless, the differences between clinical-pharmacological projects and the humanities and social sciences demand a specific ethical review for the latter, so that the principles of beneficence, non maleficence, autonomy and justice are safeguarded.

La evaluacion etica en las ciencias humanas y/o sociales. La investigacion cientifica: entre la libertad y la responsabilidad

[4] Maternal medical burdens outweigh maternal medical benefits, such maleficence requires recommending against treatment for the maternal patient.

Harming a patient without consent is not medical paternalism but medical maleficence.

The maternal-fetal dyad: exploring the two-patient obstetric model

He applied ethical principles to his practice: do no harm to the patient (primum non nocere), practise beneficence, refrain from maleficence, and maintain patient confidentiality.