Ethics is now at the centre stage of medical education and calls to intensify its formal teaching in the curriculum are getting louder. In the past, ethics was often given short shrift in the Indian MBBS curriculum, and consigned to a few forgotten pages in textbooks of forensic medicine. These mostly dealt with legal ethics; clinical and research ethics hardly ever found their way into classroom teaching. Students were expected to imbibe lessons in ethics from their seniors and learn to solve medical ethical dilemmas on their own. Unfortunately, all too often, their role models fell short of their expectations and there was a chasm between what was preached and what was practised