The purpose of assessing dangerousness is to determine whether an individual poses a risk of endangering self or others now or in the near future and to identify what interventions are necessary to minimize that risk.
Using evidence-based medical guidelines in courts will require confronting legal professionals' lack of training in assessing scientific evidence, the limitations of available evidence, and fundamental distinctions between the meaning of evidence in medicine and law.
When patient autonomy became a closely held value in medical ethics in the 1960s and '70s, the physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to deliver a given service began to be contested.
The duty of forensic psychiatrists is to serve as objective experts to courts, but special circumstances in juvenile forensic evaluations and expectations about the patient-physician relationship may encourage confusion between the roles of forensic evaluator and treating psychiatrist.
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.
Julian Savulescu's writing on conscientious objection is guided by an emphasis on the principle of distributive justice that does not allow religion to have a special status as justification.
If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.
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?