This call for the reinforcement of the duty to care echoes the 1922 CMA Code of Ethics that clearly stipulates that physicians have a duty to provide care, even at the jeopardy of their own lives. This statement may indeed be considered too strong and too categorical by many today. To require the provision of care even when doing so entails significant risk to the provider would appear to be demanding that all HCPs behave like "supreme Samaritans" [12] . Is this reasonable? Is this ethical? These remain open questions, but it is doubtful that all HCPs would adhere to such stringent obligations when faced with a SARS-like crisis. As Emmanuel [24] has instructively noted, the historical record of physicians is decidedly mixed in this regard; indeed, it was in response to the vocal and mounting opposition to treating seropositive patients at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s that the medical profession reconsidered the ongoing retrenchment of the duty to care. With the threat of a new epidemic, another round of full and open discourse is required as to whether the acceptable standard of professional engagement should occur at the level of "supreme", "good", or "merely decent" Samaritan [12] .