Marwan Hariz, MD, PhD and Jordan P. Amadio, MD, MBA
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) for enhancements of non-disease states is ethically indefensible given our incomplete knowledge of this technology. Attention should instead be focused on increasing access to DBS for patients with illnesses potentially treatable by the procedure.
Concerns about the deleterious effects of stress on the mind and body have led to the beginnings of a stress vaccine, an injection that will reduce these effects.
Daphne C. Ferrer, MD and Peter M. Yellowlees, MBBS, MD
Telepsychiatry extends access to psychiatric treatment to those who might not otherwise get it, but licensure problems and the risk of boundary violations between patients and physicians need to be worked out.
David Elkin, MD, Erick Hung, MD, and Gilbert Villela, MD
The rapidly evolving field of neuroethics is concerned with the ethical questions that new technologies will pose about autonomy, privacy, the definition of normal, and individuality.
A requirement to uphold the confidentiality of information shared in the physician-patient relationship is a central tenet of medical professionalism that, while at risk and undermined in various ways in modern medicine, has been consistently endorsed from the time of Hippocrates.
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.
In the September 2014 issue on physicians as agents of social change, Dr. Audiey Kao, editor-in-chief of Virtual Mentor interviewed Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.
The combination of low HIV literacy on the part of older adults and health care professionals’ assumption that they are at low risk leads to insufficiently early testing for HIV and late diagnosis.
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.