This third era of opioids ruining thousands of US lives follows a first era of iatrogenic addiction stemming from the Harrison Act of 1914, and a second was marked by changes in pain treatment attitudes between 1950 and 1970.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(8):E729-734. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.729.
As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):546-553. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.mhst1-1605.
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.
Until the mid-20th century, birth in the United States for Latinx Indigenous peoples was an ancestral ceremony guided by midwives and traditional healers.
AMA J Ethics. 2022;24(4):E326-332. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2022.326.
How society and medicine discussed and responded to child abuse changed dramatically in 1962. Since that time, the problem’s fuller scope has been revealed.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(2):E148-152. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.148.
Before the late 20th century, overweight and obesity were not considered population-wide health risks, but the advent of weight loss drugs in the 1990s accelerated hypermedicalization via BMI use.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(7):E550-558. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.550.