Virtuosity and Ethics in Medicine: Pellegrino’s Taxonomy as a Temporal Metric for Lobotomy

Abstract

Benjamin Nixon presents a compelling ethical analysis of the medical practice of lobotomy, applying Edmund Pellegrino’s “Taxonomy” of medical virtue—law, ethical duty, and virtue—as a critical framework. The essay examines how lobotomies were once considered medically and legally acceptable despite their disproportionate use on marginalized populations, particularly the poor, mentally ill, and incarcerated. Nixon traces how the legal and ethical justifications for lobotomy reflect broader failures in medical virtue and criminal justice, arguing that Pellegrino’s framework, while theoretically robust, is vulnerable to corruption when wielded within unethical systems. The article offers a cautionary exploration of how medicine, ethics, and law intersect to enable both healing and harm