Ethics as a Modality Affecting Health and Healthcare Practice: Revealing the Real Strengths of Traditional Healthcare

Ethics has been considered as socially accepted codes of interpersonal behaviour that helps maintain a healthy relationship between individuals and their surroundings. Historically, ethics has remained largely confined to the religious ambit; contemporarily it is presumed that despite their absolute moral values, they do not fit into practical applications to the real world. For hard-core science and for subjects that are based absolutely on observational evidence, it is hard to imagine that the practice of ethics might also have a link to health or healthcare. In conventional medical practice, ethics has been variously applied to medical practice and medical research, but it was never presumed that ethics could also be utilised as a potent tool to build a pro-health interior milieu within the individual who practises it. On the contrary, traditional medicine the world over has unfailingly used ethics as a method to achieve positive health, at the same time warning of various undesired consequences if such practices are not observed. Ayurveda, the traditional healthcare system from the Orient epitomises the practice of ethics at the core of a healthcare ideology. Ayurveda not only links the practice of ethics to individual health but also advocates the practice of ethics en masse to assure a healthy society.