Clinicians must avoid violating professional ethical principles and patients’ legal rights and they may not ever discriminate. So, what does that mean in practice?

Medical expert witnesses are ethically and legally obligated to provide honest testimony that meets the standards of the Daubert test.

Expedited partner therapy is an ethical and effective treatment for sexually transmitted infection, provided patients are reliable messengers to partners.

Transplant physicians must respect indecisive patients’ autonomy while continuing to educate them during their progress towards transplantation.

Despite clear donor consent, health professionals must communicate clearly about death to family members to avoid confusion.

When family members disagree with a patient about care planning, the physician might be able to facilitate a resolution.

A patient- and family-centered approach can illuminate possible risks and benefits of bone marrow donation to child donors and sibling recipients.

A physician may withhold information from a patient if he believes that he is acting in accordance with the patient’s wishes and best interests.

Undue influence, which occurs when prospective research participants who otherwise would not enroll are induced to enter studies that might pose significant risks, may also involve social injustices such as unequal payment and participant selection methods that unequally distribute the potential harms and benefits of research.

Clinical equipoise—the idea that the community of medical experts is uncertain about the relative therapeutic merits of the arms of a clinical trial at its outset—mitigates physicians’ responsibility for patients’ poor outcomes when patients are assigned to the control arm or are harmed by an investigational agent.