The article tries to demonstrate how the tools and perspectives of action theory may be used in philosophy of medicine and medical ethics. In the first part, some concepts and principles of action theory are reconstructed and used to sketch a view of medicine as a science of actions. The second part is a contribution to the discussion on medical ethics in the same issue of this journal and consists in a detailed analysis of the main arguments and critical remarks (...) from the point of view of action theory. (shrink)