Decision making in health care demands that we balance multiple considerations, like quality of life, statistics, and how different options could affect others. Dr Brian Zikmund-Fisher shares his own experience as a patient and explains how decision science can help us navigate ethically complex health decisions.
Death’s legal definition must be responsive to advances in technology, and it must delineate between life and death. Knowing where to draw the line is difficult.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(12):E1055-1061. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.1055.
Deception’s justifiability might depend on clinicians’ commitment to solidarity and awareness of social determinants of patients’ vulnerability to HIV infection.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(5):E382-387. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.382.
Rayner Kay Jin Tan, Jane Mingjie Lim, MSW, and Jeremiah Kah Wai Chan, MSc
Merits and drawbacks of U = U messaging are ethically and clinically complex, and drawbacks could harm patients in whom viral suppression is hard to achieve.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(5):E418-422. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.418.
Pringl Miller, MD, Preeti R. John, MD, MPH, and Sabha Ganai, MD, PhD, MPH
A surgeon’s duty is to identify goals of care, including those about quality of life, from a patient’s perspective and to consider how to achieve them.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(10):E778-782. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.778.