Annette Hanson, MD, Ron Pies, MD, and Mark Komrad, MD
Authors respond to “How Should Physicians Care for Dying Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis?” by arguing that patients’ motives for accessing death with dignity laws should be thoroughly explored and that temporarily limiting patient autonomy can promote well-being at the end of life.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(11):E1107-1109. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.1107.
Alexander Craig, MPhil and Elizabeth Dzeng, MD, PhD, MPH
Responding to “Added Points of Concern about Caring for Dying Patients,” authors argue that physicians’ refusal to prescribe lethal drugs in accordance with states’ death with dignity laws could damage patient-physician relationships and harm patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(11):E1110-1112. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.1110.
The history of Western medicine chronicles a tension between ideologies of patient care—the holistic Hippocratic view and the specialization view, with a depersonalization of the patient that coincides with the rise of pathologic anatomy in the early modern era.
Kristen N. Pallok and David A. Ansell’s “Should Clinicians Be Activists?” highlights how physician activists risk retaliation from “economically and socially” privileged physician leaders and organizational leadership who “have been trained to comply” with structural inequity.
AMA J Ethics. 2022;24(7):E694-696. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2022.694.
The continuance of public and institutional support for medical research after the publicized deaths of human research participants in the 1950s contrasts sharply with the disciplining of institutions responsible for two such deaths in recent decades, which suggests that medical research participants are no longer receiving public recognition for their contributions to science.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(12):1166-1171. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.12.mhst1-1512.
Primary materials including interviews with some of the volunteer subjects provide information on the experiments into the pathogenic mechanism of yellow fever.