It is therefore not surprising that, to date, little effort has been made to examine the connections between this area and older, more developed fields of applied moral reflection such as medical ethics and business ethics. There are several important reasons why this task should be undertaken. Practitioners operating in the field of information technology are faced with challenges which are qualitatively similar to those raised in these other fields. Moreover, since many of the gains in computing have been and are being utilized by corporations to enhance the bottom line, information technology professionals are also faced with business ethics dilemmas which pit the consideration of profit versus other social goods, such as privacy and human well-being. An example of the intersection of these fields is the issue of privacy in genetic testing and medical records management.
Some professions have a recognized and widely accepted set of prescribed ethical statements.
In addition, the educational process in the medical and business fields include a strong component of ethics. IT curricula has yet to develop this common emphasis and content of ethical education. We highlight specific developments in the fields of medical ethics and business ethics which we believe can make significant contributions to the development of IT ethics. We also address possible objections, e.g., medicine is concerned with healing patients, business ethics with profit maximization, and IT ethics with neither. Thus, they are not very useful for one another.