Thirty states have exceptions to child-neglect laws that provide shelter from misdemeanor violations for parents who treat their children through prayer in accord with the beliefs of a recognized religion.
The AAP’s guidelines on lipid screening for children raise concerns about the fundamental purpose of prevention and its role in balancing individual autonomy with the benefits of society at large.
Given the well-established correlation across cultures between poverty and unhealthy lifestyles, can it be just to hold individuals responsible for choices typical of their socioeconomic sector? Aren’t patient-responsibility programs simply conspiracies to shrink benefits to the poor?
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
A judicious approach to autism would be to replace a “disability” or “illness” paradigm with a “diversity” perspective that takes into account both strengths and weaknesses and the idea that variation can be positive in and of itself.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):348-352. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.msoc1-1504.
In treating children with autism, physicians should reframe the common dynamic in which the family wants medication that the doctor is withholding to focus instead on the family’s and physician’s share goal—the patient’s well-being.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):299-304. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.ecas1-1504.