The ad hoc capacity granted underage patients to consent to certain medical services cannot be allowed to thwart the reason it is granted in the first place—to protect the health of minors.
When a seriously ill mature minor and his parent disagree about his receiving an experimental intervention, who should decide what treatment he will receive?
When psychiatrists must submit evaluations of their patients in legal settings, they must provide complete and factual accounts even if the patient's attorneys would rather redact some information.
When deciding whether a pregnant woman will take antidepressants that pose a slight risk to the fetus, the patient and doctor must each make value-based determinations about whether absolute protection of the fetus is more important than preventing the mother’s probable suffering.
Does a surgeon’s complication rate in a randomized controlled trial constitute a “significant new finding” that must be reported to patients during the consent process?
Specific contributions to a scientific article entitle the contributor to be included as an author; requests for authorship by those who have not made those specific contributions are unethical.