As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):546-553. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.mhst1-1605.
The AMA’s Council on Rural Health (1945-1975) collaborated with domestic health care organizations in the mid-20th century to improve access to health care in rural areas.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(3):E248-252. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.248.
Kelsey Mumford, Lin Fraser, EdD, and Gail Knudson, MD, MEd
While transgender health care has moved beyond “gender identity disorder” and “gender dysphoria” as mental illnesses, gender incongruence continues to be a source of oppression.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(6):E446-451. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.446.
The gross negligence of the physicians who cared for Steve Biko, an apartheid-era South African political activist who died of injuries inflicted while in police custody, illustrates how dual loyalty—toward patients and, in this case, the state—makes performance of professional duties difficult.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):966-972. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.mhst1-1510.
In the past, forced sterilizations violated the autonomy of vulnerable women. Today, measures intended to protect such women from the abuses of the past may in fact hamper their autonomy in a different way.
The pauses the transplant community has taken, at various times throughout the history of transplantation, to make sure that transplantation was truly a boon to patients represent genuine ethical engagement.
Health care professionals and those who teach them must be prepared to examine the implications of carbon dioxide emissions on human well-being and make decisive steps towards sustainability.
James Mills Jr., MD, a founder of emergency medicine, believed he could have greater impact on medical care for the poor in his city by giving up his practice and working in the emergency room full time.
Primary materials including interviews with some of the volunteer subjects provide information on the experiments into the pathogenic mechanism of yellow fever.
Antibiotics can be compared to other forms of “tragedy of the commons,” whereby a common good (effective treatment of infections) is jeopardized by individual consumption and lack of stewardship.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(5):E418-428. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.418.