Physicians have a responsibility to assess elderly patients for conditions that could affect their ability to drive safely and to be familiar with state laws that govern physician duty to report impaired drivers.
Physicians have a professional obligation and, in many states, a legal duty to report drivers whose functional or cognitive impairments may pose a safety hazard.
Posthumous fatherhood and postmenopausal motherhood raise a multitude of legal, ethical, and social concerns that the law and regulatory agencies have not been able to adequately address to date.
Direct sterilization by means of tubal ligation is morally unacceptable in Catholic bioethics but other procedures that result in indirect sterilization may be acceptable under certain conditions.
State laws often require physicians to report suspected abuse and assault, creating a dilemma for physicians who must not only treat the injured patient but act as an informant to police.
Two physicians offer commentaries about the use of prenatal predictive testing for a late-onset disease like Huntington's and question whether the pregnant woman should ultimately have the decisional autonomy to determine the quality of life of the unborn child.