Today’s international health interventions—like colonial treatment campaigns—can be well-intentioned and still oppress and harm people they try to serve. Grasp of imperial medical history is critical for helping global health professionals understand the contexts in which they practice.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(7):743-753. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.7.mhst1-1607.
The causes of many health behaviors are deeply rooted in our culture, and using a counseling model that assumes individual control and responsibility for these behaviors can cause patients to feel hectored instead of helped.
Physicians, scientists, and public health officials are routinely on the defensive, refuting allegations of unconfirmed risks, justifying the value of vaccines, and striving to preserve public trust in vaccination overall.
James F. Thrasher, PhD, Amira Osman, MPH, and Dien Anshari, MS
Existing scientific evidence suggests that HWLs that graphically illustrate the harms of smoking should be used to effectively inform consumers and would-be consumers about these risks, but legal challenges from the tobacco industry have delayed their implementation.
The successive editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have not responded to changing American sexual practices and mores, instead pathologizing sexual behavior that its authors considered to be atypical and conflating innocuous behavior and harmful treatment of other people in its diagnostic categories.