Despite leaps forward in medical technology that have enabled the timely detection and effective treatment of many cancers, members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups and patients without health insurance often do not receive timely and appropriate care.
In the interview Dr. DePinho discusses exciting research discoveries in cancer prevention and treatment and explains why a multidisciplinary approach to patient care is the best way to improve individuals' lives now and in the future.
This month theme issue editor, Trahern Jones, a fourth-year student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, spoke with Dr. Edward Laskowski about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances among athletes today.
Prognostication means informing patients what the outcome of their illnesses and treatments are expected to be, based on the best available evidence. Prognosticating in a way that helps patients in decision making about treatment is difficult for physicians to do.
Publicizing physician ordering information as a way of peer-pressuring hospital employees into cutting costs is likely to have unintended consequences.
Doctors and hospitals must stop being bystanders to food-related illness and begin to become role models and educators in the transition to healthful eating habits, just as they did in tobacco cessation.
When a seriously ill mature minor and his parent disagree about his receiving an experimental intervention, who should decide what treatment he will receive?
A patient's request or demand for treatment does not obligate a physician to provide the treatment if the physician thinks it will cause more harm than good.
Liza-Marie Johnson, MD, MPH, MSB and Deena Levine, MD
In prescribing a medication that is in short supply, it is critical that physicians use evidence-based medicine and ethical analysis of treatment goals, rather than relying on emotional biases or social-worth criteria.