Michael J. O’Brien, MD and William P. Meehan III, MD
It is unclear whether the decreased risk of injury associated with prohibiting a teenage boy from playing football outweighs the benefits to his health and well-being of allowing him to participate.
The practice of banking sperm from adolescents about to undergo chemotherapy is not universal, which lends support to the argument that parental consent be required for the intervention.
Physicians have an ethical responsibility to be functionally literate in health statistics and able to explain information such as a test’s positive predictive value to their patients.