Punishing women who use drugs during pregnancy deters them from seeking prenatal care and entering drug treatment programs, and the relevant policies may unfairly target poor or minority women.
Elizabeth Lee Daugherty, MD, MPH and Douglas B. White, MD, MA
Opportunities to advance scientific knowledge may arise during humanitarian crises, but their presence does not justify suspension of the ethical foundations governing human subjects research.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.
Physicians working in close-knit communities, whether small towns or urban neighborhoods, have to manage relationships with people who may be simultaneously patients and neighbors, friends, and business associates.
Forced migration of Pacific Islanders raises ethical issues of health and health care disparities, which are examined in the case of Tuvaluan immigrants.
“Difficult” patient-physician encounters have roots in uncertainty about individuals’ trustworthiness, clinicians’ skills and training, and medical science.
The rationale for policy intervention to reduce obesity rates appears compelling. Justification for intervening in the case of children is particularly strong, and precedent suggests that society will more readily accept appropriate restrictions to youth behavior.
Does a surgeon’s complication rate in a randomized controlled trial constitute a “significant new finding” that must be reported to patients during the consent process?