Regularly scheduled dialysis is not standard of care for most undocumented immigrants in the United States, so preventative care, and advocacy for it, is needed.
AMA J Ethics. 2019; 21(1):E86-92. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2019.86.
Kristen N. Pallok and David A. Ansell’s “Should Clinicians Be Activists?” highlights how physician activists risk retaliation from “economically and socially” privileged physician leaders and organizational leadership who “have been trained to comply” with structural inequity.
AMA J Ethics. 2022; 24(7):E694-696. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2022.694.
Shelley Wall, MBChB, Nikki Allorto, MBChB, Ross Weale, MBBS, Victor Kong, PhD, and Damian Clarke, PhD
Caring for severe burn injuries in low- and middle-income countries requires making decisions about resource allocation given particular contextual factors.
AMA J Ethics. 2018; 20(6):575-580. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2018.20.6.msoc1-1806.
Those in prison are less healthy than the general population, are far more likely to have engaged in high-risk behaviors that can result in organ damage, disease and disability, and age more rapidly than nonincarcerated individuals do.
The greatest pressure to resuscitate the extremely low-birth-weight infant often results from successful marketing efforts that lead families to expect that their premature infants will be cute and healthy.
The social-justice question we must pose to physicians is: Are you willing to advocate for changes to the medical system that creates the need for you to take on charity care in the first place?
If I am unwilling to pay more taxes so an 85-year-old stranger can have a left-ventricular assist device, then I am morally obligated to say the same holds true for a future version of me in those same circumstances.