The AAP’s guidelines on lipid screening for children raise concerns about the fundamental purpose of prevention and its role in balancing individual autonomy with the benefits of society at large.
People with mental illness or a degenerative mental disease have special protections under the law when entering into contracts or other binding documents.
There are nonpharmacological approaches to managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia and the difficulties associated with evaluating and implementing these approaches.
Medical technology presents a new ethical question in the case of a patient with a left ventricular assist device who, when informed that he has pneumonia and is ineligible for a heart transplant, asks that the LVAD be turned off.
Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.