Punishing women who use drugs during pregnancy deters them from seeking prenatal care and entering drug treatment programs, and the relevant policies may unfairly target poor or minority women.
Respecting patient autonomy sometimes entails adult patients' making what those in allopathic medicine view as poor decisions, but compassionate patient communication can leave the door open for patients to change their minds.
Balancing parents' rights to raise their children and a state's duty to protect children is no easy task. Even though most states have religious exemptions to child abuse or neglect laws, courts have ruled in favor of both parents and states, depending on the circumstances.
James Mills Jr., MD, a founder of emergency medicine, believed he could have greater impact on medical care for the poor in his city by giving up his practice and working in the emergency room full time.
David S. Rosenthal, MD and Anne M. Doherty-Gilman, MPH
Integrative medicine combines the best of both conventional and evidence-based CAM therapies for treatment, wellness, and prevention. 61 percent of cancer survivors have used CAM.
Wayne Vaught argues that physicians have an ethical obligation to treat CAM fairly, which means subjecting it to standards that are as rigorous but not more so than those applied to conventional medicine.