The World Medical Association (WMA) is the global representative voice of physicians, regardless of their specialty, location, or practice setting. The WMA's mission is to serve humanity by endeavouring to achieve the highest possible standards of medical care, ethics, science, education, and health-related human rights for all people. The WMA Ethics Unit was established in 2003 to coordinate policy development and review and to expand the
WMA's ethics activities in three areas: liaison with other international entities with activities in the field of ethics; outreach via conferences and the WMA website; and development of new ethics educational material such as this Manual.