In the past, forced sterilizations violated the autonomy of vulnerable women. Today, measures intended to protect such women from the abuses of the past may in fact hamper their autonomy in a different way.
If society values physicians because they possess valuable clinical skills and exercise those skills with a fiduciary ethic of care toward their patients, we ought to evaluate physicians on those grounds directly, rather than looking to their behavior “after hours.”
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.
James Mills Jr., MD, a founder of emergency medicine, believed he could have greater impact on medical care for the poor in his city by giving up his practice and working in the emergency room full time.
Forced migration of Pacific Islanders raises ethical issues of health and health care disparities, which are examined in the case of Tuvaluan immigrants.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(12):1211-1221. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.12.imhl1-1712.
“Difficult” patient-physician encounters have roots in uncertainty about individuals’ trustworthiness, clinicians’ skills and training, and medical science.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(4):391-398. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.4.mhst1-1704.