Antibiotics can be compared to other forms of “tragedy of the commons,” whereby a common good (effective treatment of infections) is jeopardized by individual consumption and lack of stewardship.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(5):E418-428. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.418.
Amy Fairchild, PhD, MPH, Ronald Bayer, PhD, and James Colgrove, PhD, MPH
A brief history of public opposition to disease surveillance in the U.S., despite the documented success of this tool in recognizing and managing threats to public health.
Invention of the stethoscope in 1816 changed the patient-physician relationship. Technology, widely used in medicine today, is not a substitute for the physician’s human understanding of the patient’s life.
Student of medicine and the history of medicine, J Mellinger examines a 14th-century manuscript for evidence of physicians’ duty to treat during the Black Plague.
The Epidemic Intelligence Service, by Douglas H. Hamilton, traces the history of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, with details about the service’s response to actual and potential epidemic outbreaks.
A physician responds to a previous article about the differences between using a commercial laboratory and a smaller hospital or pathology group lab for dermatological tests.