When a would-be living organ donor wants to accept risk in the name of altruism when there is little chance for benefit or significant chance for harm, physicians are justified in limiting that altruism.
While respecting patient autonomy and involving patients in decision making, physicians must recognize that some situations call for them to exercise selective paternalism in order to fulfill their professional duty to uphold standards of care.
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.
When a patient requests an unfamiliar treatment, the physician should not hesitate to research it before giving a categorical reply about its safety or efficacy.
When ventilator support is being withdrawn from a dying child, responsive titration of sedative medications by the ICU team can relieve suffering without anesthetizing the child completely or hastening death.
We should conduct empirical research to better understand how patients, parents, clinicians, and others grapple with the ethical challenges we confront when caring for children who are dying.
Assigning community based on race suggests that phenotype reveals something consistent about biology that is equal in standing to factors like weight, dietary habits, smoking history, and whether or not you had rheumatic fever as a child.