Lee C. Zhao, MD, Gaines Blasdel, Augustus Parker, and Rachel Bluebond-Langner, MD
Tension between realistic goals and unrealistic views about how to achieve them is compounded when patients are eager to revise a prior surgeon’s gender-affirming procedure.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(6):E391-397. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.391.
The adverse health effects of climate change should be the focus of physician advocacy efforts and of conversations between physicians and their patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(12):1174-1182. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.12.ecas3-1712.
When a patient challenges the use of a reusable, stainless steel speculum rather than a plastic, throw-away one, the physician should educate her on the safety and environmental benefits of reusable medical devices.
Distinctions between treatment and enhancement, and between supposedly authentic and inauthentic tools, often inform judgments about what is morally acceptable in sport.
Is it ethical to create and advertise, either publicly or during office visits, package deals that offer patients an incentive to have procedures they are not already seeking and might not have considered?
Within the patient-physician relationship, the request for neuroenhancement becomes a chief concern, and the physician has a duty to take a history and perform a physical exam to determine whether the patient’s current level of function represents significant change.