There are nonpharmacological approaches to managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia and the difficulties associated with evaluating and implementing these approaches.
In a study of New York physicians' compliance with reporting of communicable diseases, surveyed physicians responded better to legal warnings than to requests that explained public health benefits.
Physicians need to be aware of and guard against the liability risks of having nonphysician clinicians provide services that do not meet the standard of care of the practice due to the staff member's inadequate experience or supervision.
The 2013 BRAIN Research Initiative calls for the integration of ethics into medical education and all levels of research, from hypothesis generation to evaluation, which promises to provide an ethical foundation for all future biomedical research.
B. Rashmi Borah, Nicolle K. Strand, JD, MBioethics, and Kata L. Chillag, PhD
The Bioethics Commission’s recommendations to include research participants with impaired consent capacity provide an ethical foundation for neuroscience.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(12):1192-1198. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.12.nlit1-1612.
The harms of communicating autism risk can be avoided by helping families to understand risk and to distinguish between poor and good sources of scientific information, which should take families’ interests into account.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):323-327. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.nlit1-1504.
Framing discussions of ALS around the disease rather than the psychologically complex person with the disease focuses attention on symptoms and imagined outcomes rather than patients’ coping strategies and quality of life.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(6):530-534. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.6.nlit2-1506.
In reports of industry-funded studies that compared the ocular hypotensive efficacy of topical prostaglandins, conclusions in the article abstracts differed from the results of the main outcome measure 62 percent of the time.
The early diagnosis of Alzheimer disease is a boon in that it enables advance planning, but that planning process can engender conflict between respect for future-oriented autonomy and future welfare.