The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.

A former military physician explores the moral position and dual role responsibilities of the military physician in U.S. society.

The roles of the military professional and the medical professional sometimes conflict, but this author seeks to reconcile the ethical ideals of both.

Feminism plays critical roles in innovating health care policies and practices. Feminist insights into clinicians as gatekeepers to gender-transition interventions can help resist tendencies to pathologize transgender.

A recent journal article examines the potentially negative consequences of physicians acting as agents of the state.

The revisions balance a growing understanding of gender identity disorders and societal views with the need to retain conditions that benefit from intervention and the removal of which would hamper patients’ ability to receive medical treatment.

Connections between racism and dehumanization have immediate, lethal, deleterious, longer-term consequences. Lessons from Nazi eugenics and human experimentation still apply.

The Holocaust differs from other instances of mass murder in that it was medically sanctioned genocide.

Fostering transgender patients’ sense of agency should be a clinical and ethical priority.

Despite common outcomes of GRS, decision making about surgical care differs among patients across the lifespan.