There are nonpharmacological approaches to managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia and the difficulties associated with evaluating and implementing these approaches.
A review of three journal articles shows the significant impact that poverty has on physical and mental health status, as well as all causes of mortality.
The 2013 BRAIN Research Initiative calls for the integration of ethics into medical education and all levels of research, from hypothesis generation to evaluation, which promises to provide an ethical foundation for all future biomedical research.
B. Rashmi Borah, Nicolle K. Strand, JD, MBioethics, and Kata L. Chillag, PhD
The Bioethics Commission’s recommendations to include research participants with impaired consent capacity provide an ethical foundation for neuroscience.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(12):1192-1198. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.12.nlit1-1612.
The harms of communicating autism risk can be avoided by helping families to understand risk and to distinguish between poor and good sources of scientific information, which should take families’ interests into account.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):323-327. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.nlit1-1504.
Framing discussions of ALS around the disease rather than the psychologically complex person with the disease focuses attention on symptoms and imagined outcomes rather than patients’ coping strategies and quality of life.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(6):530-534. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.6.nlit2-1506.
The early diagnosis of Alzheimer disease is a boon in that it enables advance planning, but that planning process can engender conflict between respect for future-oriented autonomy and future welfare.
While it is important to make parents of severely neurologically damaged newborns aware of the difficulty in predicting their child’s survival chances or future disabilities, it is also crucial to inform them of the statistical evidence about outcomes for their child’s condition.
Rates of referral to a cardiologist, which markedly improves cardiovascular outcomes, differ significantly based on nonclinical patient characteristics.