A Clip from House for Discussion

House as a series is pretty great at showcasing all kinds of moral and ethical dilemmas that can come up in the medical field, and one that I think should be mentioned here is when one of the doctors in the show (Chase) has a patient who happens to be a dictator of an African country. This dictator has been charged with crimes against humanity, and is a pretty stereotypical evil character. While this man is in the hospital, Chase has an opportunity to murder him and make it appear like an accident. The ethical question here is: Do you kill the dictator? Or do you let him live so he can "fly back to his country and murder thousands of people?" (quote from the show).

This raises a few interesting questions. One of them is not restricted to the medical field, and it can be stated as "If you know someone is going to kill numerous innocent people, and the only way you can stop this person is by killing them, should you do it?" The other one, which is specifically medically related, "Do doctors have an obligation to treat their patients to the best of their ability, even if they believe their patient is despicable human (in their opinion)?"