Physicians can ethically withhold information in situations where full disclosure of a diagnosis or treatment would cause great psychological harm to the patient.
Presymptomatic genetic testing for neurodegenerative diseases can help patients make effective treatment decisions, but the medical profession needs to ensure that the increasing use of the tests is done responsibly.
Douglas E. Paull, MD, MS and Paul N. Uhlig, MD, MPA
Risk managers can help patient-subjects and clinician-researchers make informed novel device implantation decisions in the absence of preclinical trial data.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(11):E911-918. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.911.
Contemporary medicine has been the subject of many televisions shows. Whether intensely dramatic or humorous and comical, each gives the public a small piece of the picture of American medicine today.
An ethical case explores whether a medical student doing a radiology rotation has a duty to inform a patient whose chest x-ray shows bony metastases that was not caught by the original radiologist or mentioned in the ED chart.
The relatively new phenomenon of releasing President George W. Bush's medical records to the public also serves the purpose of boosting his political image.