With good planning and good will, medical professionals’ right of conscience and patients’ rights to controversial services can be both protected and accommodated.
Primary materials including interviews with some of the volunteer subjects provide information on the experiments into the pathogenic mechanism of yellow fever.
Good ethics and good business don’t have to be in conflict. Ophthalmologists shouldn’t resort to requiring their patients to buy contact lenses in-house; instead, they should focus on expanding their skill set and providing personalized service.
Specific advocate guidelines are needed for the protection of children in state custody who are potential research subjects in trials that would expose them to greater-than-minimal risk but also hold the prospect of direct benefit.
Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.
Richard L. Kravitz, MD, MSPH and Jodi Halpern, MD, PhD
Patients have a responsibility to discerningly present the drug information they receive from direct-to-consumer advertising and to be active partners with their physician in making health care decisions.