Tina K. Sacks, PhD, Katie Savin, MSW, and Quenette L. Walton, PhD, LCSW
Would you question health decisions made by a 37-year old Black woman whose great-grandfather died in the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee?
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(2):E183-188. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.183.
Dr Elena Portacolone joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Daisy Elise Feddoes: “Should Artificial Intelligence Play a Role in Cultivating Social Connections Among Older Adults?”
Web-based physician rating sites are part of a multi-decade cultural shift in the relationship between physicians, patients, and society. But a system in which “patient’s orders” reign is just as lopsided as one that puts “doctor’s orders” in the driver’s seat.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
Measuring outcomes alone is not the answer. There should be a way to reward the doctor for educating a patient about lifestyle modifications and then documenting that the care provided followed patient preferences.