Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

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Confidentiality is anonymity of gamete or embryo donors to the recipients and resulted children and Vice Versa. In this article, I formulated the question about confidentiality through two main questions: 1- Ethically speaking, should the information about the characteristics and identity of donors be kept in specific organizations to be accessible for who considered having the right of access in the future? 2- Are receivers ethically obliged to inform their children about their biological origin? In this article, I assess the subject from Deontological, Utilitarianistic and Principalistic approaches and conclude that it is the right of such children to be informed about their biological origin. Of course in Iran, such ethical obligation should be suspended until the problems relating the heritage are solved.

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The appearance and the way a doctor is dressed has a very influential effect on the physician-patient relationship. Interns and trainees of medicine must follow the principles of professional behavior as they play a crucial role during their education. The aim of this research is to analyze the interns and trainee's point of view towards dress code.
In this study, after preparing a questionnaire and assessing its validity and reliability, it was sent to 337 interns and trainees of universities of medical sciences, at Shariati, Imam Khomaini and Sina hospitals, which are selected by portion method, after ward their viewpoints were analyzed from 5 dimensions.
One hundred and seventy seven students (52.5%) and seventy students (20.8%) got mean score and high score of physical features respectively.. Two hundred and sixteen students (64.1%) and fifty four students (16%) got mean and high score of dress code respectively. One hundred and eighty eight students (55.8%) and seventy five students (22.3%) got mean and high marks in make up respectively. Two hundred and twenty three students (66.2%)were completely in favor of observing personal hygiene while one hundred and fourteen students (33.8%) just agreed with this issue. Finally, in the total physical features and dress code, 210 students (62.3%) got the average mark and 58 students (17.2%) earned high mark. Interns and trainee's viewpoints about the physical features had a significant correlation with age, sex, and educational level (P<0.05).
The results of this study shows that teaching the importance of physical feature and professional dress code is the most important action to boost the level of compliance about appearance by interns and trainees. Compiling the professional dress code can help getting this aim come true.

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Throughout history, various religions and schools of philosophy have viewed human dignity as an important issue and a topic of discussion. The theoretical roots of this concept lies in ancient philosophies and religions, in Medieval as well as Modern periods, the most significant of which may be the Cyrus Cylinder, Stoicism, teachings of philosophers of the Renaissance period and of thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and John Locke, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Abrahamic religions. Human dignity is infallibly referred to as being intrinsic and inviolable, and although there is no one comprehensive, inclusive and universally accepted definition for the term, it is fundamentally the characteristic that lies at the core of the basic rights of humans. In biomedical ethics there are two different dimensions to human dignity: the dignity of the individual and the dignity of humanity as such, and while the former is considered to be absolute, the latter is relative, as it is realized simply by belonging to the human race. Human dignity applies to all the principles of biomedical ethics, and sets the standards for all manners of reasoning and inference in this field. In areas such as research ethics, ethics of beginning of life and end of life care, and public health ethics, human dignity has clear requirements and implications, for instance regarding issues such as unethical uses of the embryo, fetus, and the human body for commercial purposes, the right to live and die with dignity near the end of life, and the right to basic indiscriminate health care.

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Although we have diverse methods in laboratory studies, such as cellular and molecular sciences, understanding many issues related to human health requires research on animals. An ethical duty of every researcher is to respect animal rights. In our country, educational and research activities are carried out frequently on animals. Therefore, guidelines for ethical use of animals in Iran were developed in 2004 after a review of international resources and considering the needs of researchers working with animals. This guideline was written in four sections, including animal transportation, facilities, animal care personnel, and research users. However, some studies show that researchers need comprehensive and easy to use instructions on the ethical use of laboratory animals. On the other hand, inadequate knowledge about ethics principles in research on laboratory animals have revealed the need to update guideline to be more practical, applicable, and in line with researchers' requirements. In this study, the above mentioned guideline was revised and completed in five parts, including transportation, facilities, animal care personnel, research users, and the use of animals in experimental procedures. In the first section, points on transport of animals and facilities, including location, cage, ventilation, humidity, light, temperature, noise, water and food are presented. The new revision, contains additional paragraphs, and some previous paragraphs are split. Another part of the findings is presented in terms of fundamental duties and ethical performance of persons who work in laboratory animals' houses and researchers working with animals. The final section of the findings is related to the use of animals in laboratory processes which are not presented in the previous formulation of the guideline, and includes basic ethical issues in regard to categorizing, anesthesia, surgery, and euthanasia. Therefore, the guideline was revised to be much more practical, more applicable, and should lead to some form of researchers' training in this field.

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Quality of nursing care services directly influences individuals' health status. Compiling codes of ethics according to the religion and culture of each population could be an appropriate approach in improving quality of health care services especially nursing care. Hence, the most important priority in our national health system is developing ethical guidelines.
For this purpose a task force has been established in collaboration with nurses, physicians, lawyers and clergymen who were expert in the field of medical ethics. The code of ethics for Iranian nurses was drafted in 2010. The draft that included 12 values and 71 regulations of professional ethics were finally approved in the second session of the Ethics Supreme Council of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education on 6 March, 2010.
The values consist of concepts such as maintaining human dignity, adherence to professional obligations, accountability and responsibility, patient privacy, promotion of scientific and practical competence and respect to individual's autonomy.
Also, 71 regulations of professional ethics divided to five sections including "Nurse and Community" consisting of 9 items, "Nurse and Professional Commitments" with 14 items, "Nurse and Clinical Services" with 23 items, "The Nurse and Other Healthcare Providers in Medical Team" with 15 items, and also "Nurse, Education and Research" including 10 items.

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