This case illustrates how emergency physicians find themselves with an empty toolbox and must compromise to meet their responsibilities to patients and themselves.
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.
Jennifer Aldrich, MD, Jessica Kant, MSW, LICSW, MPH, and Eric Gramszlo
Estelle v Gamble (1976) reiterates that the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution requires adequate care to be offered to all people who are incarcerated.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(6):E407-413. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.407.
Dr Jennifer Aldrich joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Jessica Kant and Eric Gramszlo: “Gender-Affirming Care, Incarceration, and the Eighth Amendment.”