Heather J. Logghe, MD, Tyler Rouse, MD, Alec Beekley, MD, and Rajesh Aggarwal, MD, PhD
Modern surgeons are diverse, socially adept, and differ in other important ways from the stereotype of a technically gifted white male with poor bedside manner.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(5):492-500. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2018.20.5.mhst1-1805.
Tina K. Sacks, PhD, Katie Savin, MSW, and Quenette L. Walton, PhD, LCSW
Would you question health decisions made by a 37-year old Black woman whose great-grandfather died in the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee?
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(2):E183-188. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.183.
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.
Kelsey Mumford, Lin Fraser, EdD, and Gail Knudson, MD, MEd
While transgender health care has moved beyond “gender identity disorder” and “gender dysphoria” as mental illnesses, gender incongruence continues to be a source of oppression.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(6):E446-451. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.446.
Racial integration in American organized medicine was very slow to come, and many wrongs were committed in the name of reunifying the country's doctors after the Civil War.
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.
James Mills Jr., MD, a founder of emergency medicine, believed he could have greater impact on medical care for the poor in his city by giving up his practice and working in the emergency room full time.