Although now discredited, the idea that mothers’ behavior is responsible for autism lives on in the social pressure that mothers feel to save their autistic children, at a cost to both the self-blaming parents and people with autism.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):353-358. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.mhst1-1504.
Physician-assisted doping of athletes has transformed high-performance sport into a chronically overmedicated subculture and spread so-called hormonal rejuvenation to the general public.
Physicians, scientists, and public health officials are routinely on the defensive, refuting allegations of unconfirmed risks, justifying the value of vaccines, and striving to preserve public trust in vaccination overall.
Because many complementary and alternative medicine therapies for autism are based on misguided notions of its cause and lack support from scientifically sound studies, physicians should steer parents away from these practices and toward safe, effective, and evidence-based interventions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):375-380. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.sect2-1504
There is evidence that some complementary and alternative treatments improve physiological abnormalities in autism and thus hold promise for improving symptoms.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):369-374. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.sect1-1504.
The five-year curriculum in medical humanities at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine seeks to create a foundation for practice and to develop intercampus, interinstitutional, and community programming.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(6):491-495. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.6.spec1-1506.