Ethical protocols are useful to have to prevent genuinely bad stuff from happening but they are indeed over used to instead limit legal and political liability; which is not the type of "bad stuff" most people would care about but which is something that gets expensive quickly if you are a multi billion dollar corporation in the business of converting government funding into profit (aka. a Pharmaceutical company). The only bad outcome they really care about is of a financial nature.
When ethics devolves into morals and religion, it gets worse because in that case the "bad stuff" is somebody feeling offended/insulted and when that conflicts with potentially life saving new treatments; that in itself might be considered a bad thing (unethical?). Ethics has this way of contradicting itself.
When you weigh two bad outcomes, the rational thing to do (the least bad thing) might not be the ethical thing to do but some people (me) would still consider that the right thing to do. When letting people die that want to live (an important caveat) is more ethical than doing something to prevent that, something is very wrong. Also letting them die when they actually want to is considered unethical by some.
When ethics devolves into morals and religion, it gets worse because in that case the "bad stuff" is somebody feeling offended/insulted and when that conflicts with potentially life saving new treatments; that in itself might be considered a bad thing (unethical?). Ethics has this way of contradicting itself.
When you weigh two bad outcomes, the rational thing to do (the least bad thing) might not be the ethical thing to do but some people (me) would still consider that the right thing to do. When letting people die that want to live (an important caveat) is more ethical than doing something to prevent that, something is very wrong. Also letting them die when they actually want to is considered unethical by some.