A major contributor to the lack of medicines in developing countries is an intellectual property regime that allows proprietary drug companies with intellectual property monopolies to charge high prices and maximize profit.
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.
There are fewer Black men in US medical schools today than in 1970, although their contributions are key to building medicine’s capacity to equitably promote healing.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(12):E919-925. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.919.