This month theme issue editor, Trahern Jones, a fourth-year student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, spoke with Dr. Edward Laskowski about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances among athletes today.
Registries of those considered dangerous focus wrongly on those with mental illness, who account for only 4 percent of violent acts committed in the United States.
Is it ethical to create and advertise, either publicly or during office visits, package deals that offer patients an incentive to have procedures they are not already seeking and might not have considered?
Within the patient-physician relationship, the request for neuroenhancement becomes a chief concern, and the physician has a duty to take a history and perform a physical exam to determine whether the patient’s current level of function represents significant change.
Some question whether plastic surgeons bear responsibility for promoting suspect norms of beauty, given that certain types of cosmetic enhancements reinforce common conceptions of normality that are harmful to society.
Tom Alsaigh, MD, Laura Nicholson, MD, PhD, and Eric Topol, MD
Clinicians should have a working understanding of gene editing, controversy surrounding its use, and its far-reaching clinical and ethical implications.
AMA J Ethics. 2019;21(12):E1089-1097. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2019.1089.
Because regulatory approval of cognitive enhancement drugs is likely, physicians may want to consider whether they would condone the practice for restoration of function only or for enhancement purposes as well.
Taking care of patients whose cultures, belief systems, and family hierarchy structures differ from those on which many U.S. laws and regulations involves strategies—particularly regarding end-of-life care and surrogate decision making.