Physicians need to understand when it may be appropriate to let patients get involved in medical decision-making and when it may be necessary to provide their personal medical judgment.
Physicians need to take an active role in improving the genetic literacy of the general population and also push for public health policies that make new genetic tools available to everyone.
Genetic information is redefining what society and the medical profession considers to be normal and what departures from the norm are deserving of medical intervention.
When patients and physicians disagree on the use of genetic engineering technology, physicians must act in accordance with professional ethics and society's guidelines.
A bioethicist who had thyroid cancer as a child describes his recent positive experience as an adult patient with his surgeon and how his surgeon's bioethics training helped the patient-physician relationship.
An attending physician in an urban teaching hospital faces an ethical dilemma when a mother refused to allow an African American medical student to examine her child.