This paper argues that the four prima facie principles-beneficence, 
non-maleficence, respect for autonomy and justice-afford a good and widely 
acceptable basis for 'doing good medical ethics'. It confronts objections that 
the approach is simplistic, incompatible with a virtue-based approach to 
medicine, that it requires respect for autonomy always to have priority when the 
principles clash at the expense of clinical obligations to benefit patients and 
global justice. It agrees that the approach does not provide universalisable 
methods either for resolving such moral dilemmas arising from conflict between 
the principles or their derivatives, or universalisable methods for resolving 
disagreements about the scope of these principles-long acknowledged lacunae but 
arguably to be found, in practice, with all other approaches to medical ethics. 
The value of the approach, when properly understood, is to provide a 
universalisable though prima facie set of moral commitments which all doctors 
can accept, a basic moral language and a basic moral analytic framework. These 
can underpin an intercultural 'moral mission statement' for the goals and 
practice of medicine.