While useful in analyzing population trends in relative body weight, BMI possesses multiple shortcomings when used as an individualized health screening tool.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(7):E545-549. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.545.
Physician's view of what society expects of physicians and what physicians expect from society. Society demands accessible, quality care. Physicians want balanced lives.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
Until healthful food is widely affordable and accessible to all people, any discussions of how policy might infringe on the right to choose may be misguided.
If society values physicians because they possess valuable clinical skills and exercise those skills with a fiduciary ethic of care toward their patients, we ought to evaluate physicians on those grounds directly, rather than looking to their behavior “after hours.”