Transitions in relabeling personalized medicine as precision medicine, precision health, or wellness genomics reflect shifting the locus of responsibility for health from individuals to clinicians and in shifting focus from genetic risk to genetic enhancement.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(9):E881-890. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.881.
Alison Bateman-House, MA, MPH and Amy Fairchild, PhD, MPH
When a Public Health Service medical officer diagnosed an immigrant with a “loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease,” that individual was considered “medically certified.”
Moral distress arises not only from organizational constraints on moral action but also from the environmental impacts of health care and climate change.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(6):617-628. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.6.mhst1-1706.
The causes of many health behaviors are deeply rooted in our culture, and using a counseling model that assumes individual control and responsibility for these behaviors can cause patients to feel hectored instead of helped.
The gross negligence of the physicians who cared for Steve Biko, an apartheid-era South African political activist who died of injuries inflicted while in police custody, illustrates how dual loyalty—toward patients and, in this case, the state—makes performance of professional duties difficult.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):966-972. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.mhst1-1510.
Jayant Menon, MD, MEng and Daniel J. Riskin, MD, MBA
The authors describe a historical pattern in which a set of enabling technologies facilitates rapid advances in medical practice, resulting in recognition of new ethical challenges and a decades-long struggle to resolve them.