Physicians need to perform their due diligence and practice caution when prescribing addictive pain medications to relieve their patients' chronic pain due to increased federal monitoring of pain prescriptions.
Physicians need to help surrogate decision makers to make treatment and end-of-life decisions for those with severe neurological damage by proving a realistic prognosis and maintain strong lines of communication.
Medical ethicists have discussed the use of race classification in determining disease prevalence and the response of specific ethnic groups to different medications.
Refusals of psychotropic medication by detained criminal defendants raise conflicting dual loyalties for psychiatrists between the duty to treat a patient and the duty to protect society from that patient.
Physicians need to take an active role in improving the genetic literacy of the general population and also push for public health policies that make new genetic tools available to everyone.