The Fourth Industrial Revolution's Impact on Medical Ethics

Starting with the 1947 Nuremberg Code, the field of medical ethics began to rapidly develop, eventually coming to define three core values for ethical treatment and research via the Common Rule: respect, beneficence, and justice. In a new era of big data and precision medicine stemming from the Fourth Industrial Revolution, medical professionals strive to uphold these values, but with innovation comes new challenges. In this thesis, I will discuss the history of medical ethics to provide a foundation for ethical review, define the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and examine respect, beneficence, and justice and their relations to precision medicine to exemplify how recent technological expansion and sophistication has impacted ethical discourse and legislation.