This month, Virtual Mentor's theme issue editor for March 2012, Alon Neidich, interviewed Dr. Al Roth about the growing importance of paired kidney exchanges for incompatible patient-donor pairs.
Both bans on unhealthful foods and warning label requirements face strong legal opposition from industry and ignite furious public debate about the role and limits of government intervention in American lifestyles.
The belief persists that patient satisfaction surveys are more responsive to friendliness and expensive facilities than clinician interaction, but there is evidence to the contrary.
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.
Until healthful food is widely affordable and accessible to all people, any discussions of how policy might infringe on the right to choose may be misguided.
When a patient requests an unfamiliar treatment, the physician should not hesitate to research it before giving a categorical reply about its safety or efficacy.
Karen Uhlenhuth, Angira Patel, MD, and John Lantos, MD
A statin drug will not give a 10-year-old a high level of energy, the freedom to interact with peers without fear of being bullied, or a generally happy outlook on life.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.