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[quote=Anonymous]I can't speak for all doctors but I will say that my mom spent her career in family medicine and OB/GYN. She was basically forced into retirement as her health declined and she faced more age discrimination, but she hung on as long as she could because of her patients. She did everything for her patients. She arguably chose her patients over her own children at some points. She made multiple trips to impoverished places, including extremely dangerous locations, to provide health care to people in dire need. She even testified against the abusive husband of one of her patients once...to protect her patient. She didn't take pharma kickbacks and she obviously treated people who were not insured.

Is that altruism? Was she motivated by helping people, or by how helping people made her feel? Knowing my mother I think it was mostly altruism and doing what was right. I'm sure it made her feel good, too. But at that point, does it even matter? I don't know what the dividing line would be -- if you saved X number of lives and did Y humanitarian aid missions to Z countries, then you're altruistic -- that's rather ridiculous. But clearly altruistic doctors exist.  [/quote]

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