The FDA’s approval for over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception marked a departure from its standard approval process and obstructed access to a safe and effective drug. That departure could set a dangerous precedent for future decisions.
This month, Virtual Mentor theme issue editor Kimberley Swartz, a medical student at the University of Florida College of Medicine, interviewed Dr. Gary Wang about the use of Truvada, approved in 2012 as a pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV infection.
Equating conscience with clinical judgment challenges the way that ethics is marginalized in medical education. Ethics is simply an account of what good medical practice looks like in particular situations.
Margaret Little, PhD and Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MA, MD
Society is best served by an approach to conscience that combines a progressive understanding of patients’ needs, a nuanced determination of when those needs translate into claims, and a limited role for conscientious refusal.
An attempt to investigate correlations between race, attitudes, and contraceptive use did not find meaningful associations between race and attitudes about birth control or pregnancy that could influence contraceptive choice.
In the September 2014 issue on physicians as agents of social change, Dr. Audiey Kao, editor-in-chief of Virtual Mentor interviewed Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.