In this cartoon, a guilt-ridden, heavily scarred surgeon prepares to atone for his team’s failed attempts to save an innocent child victim of a mass shooting.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(7):E632-635. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.632.
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
This narrative information graphic contextualizes the lack of current maternal morbidity and mortality data in the United States since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(1):E92-93. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.92.
Illustrations that have commented on medicine and society have evolved over the last 150 years from being judgmental and harsh towards racial and ethnic minorities to now emphasizing the positive aspects of diversity.
During the 1960s and '70s, the iconography of ads for antipsychotic drugs changed from former depictions of docile white women patients to depictions of hostile black men, reflecting transformations in how American culture viewed race and mental illness.