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.
Kyle B. Brothers, MD, PhD and Esther E. Knapp, MD, MBE
Direct-to-consumer genetic testing requires that physicians share decision making with patients, not order unnecessary tests or interventions, and refer to genetic specialists when necessary.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(9):E812-818. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.812.
Long-acting injectables powerfully augment HIV care, but broad acceptance and uptake could be compromised by what we know about experiences with antipsychotics.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(5):E405-409. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.405.
Rayner Kay Jin Tan, Jane Mingjie Lim, MSW, and Jeremiah Kah Wai Chan, MSc
Merits and drawbacks of U = U messaging are ethically and clinically complex, and drawbacks could harm patients in whom viral suppression is hard to achieve.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(5):E418-422. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.418.
Deborah M. Eng, MS, MA and Scott J. Schweikart, JD, MBE
A just culture perspective suggests that punitive responses to those who err should be reserved for those who have willfully and irremediably caused harm.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(9):E779-783. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.779.