The AAP’s guidelines on lipid screening for children raise concerns about the fundamental purpose of prevention and its role in balancing individual autonomy with the benefits of society at large.
Given the well-established correlation across cultures between poverty and unhealthy lifestyles, can it be just to hold individuals responsible for choices typical of their socioeconomic sector? Aren’t patient-responsibility programs simply conspiracies to shrink benefits to the poor?
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.
There are fewer Black men in US medical schools today than in 1970, although their contributions are key to building medicine’s capacity to equitably promote healing.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(12):E919-925. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.919.
Marjorie Westervelt, PhD, MPH, Darius Billingsley, MD, Maya London, and Tonya Fancher, MD, MPH
Retention, student progression, and career advancement milestones are at least as important as admissions in promoting just medical education opportunity.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(12):E937-945. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.937.
Barbara Barzansky, PhD, MHPE, Robert B. Hash, MD, MBA, Veronica Catanese, MD, MBA, and Donna Waechter, PhD
Diversity standards in medical education accreditation do not guarantee diversity but stimulate schools’ activities to recruit and retain diverse students and faculty.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(12):E946-952. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.946.