AMA Journal of Ethics^®

This article considers which risks AI-facilitated surgical robotics pose for safety, confidentiality, informed consent, and surgical training. 

Diagnostic utility of weight and body mass index is widely overestimated, and their use as health and wellness measures can be sources of iatrogenic harm. 

Use of body mass index as a health care metric is controversial, especially in candidacy assessments for gender-affirming surgery.  

Underlying ideological foundations of stigma and equipment inadequacy include thin-centrism and inadequate representation of fat people in health care organizational leadership.  

Editorial Fellows Astrid Floegel-Shetty and Kratika Mishra join Ethics Talk to discuss the development of this month’s theme issue on medicine’s overreliance on BMI, and fat stigma researcher Ragen Chastain talks about how patients can be harmed by BMI surgical guidelines and what to do if it happens to you.

Healthist views about body shape and weight are oppressive and lead to pernicious harms, especially to members of vulnerable groups. 

Success in uterus transplantation among ciswomen suggests that transwomen and some transmen will also likely have interest in this intervention.

Tension between realistic goals and unrealistic views about how to achieve them is compounded when patients are eager to revise a prior surgeon’s gender-affirming procedure.

Estelle v Gamble (1976) reiterates that the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution requires adequate care to be offered to all people who are incarcerated.

This article shares one transgender person’s numerous health care encounters over 20 years, as both a patient and a professional.