Most physicians schedule out months in advance, requiring their patients to cope with their condition until their appointment and risk their suffering becoming discredited.
AMA J Ethics. 2022;24(12):E1181-1182. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2022.1181.
One of the many doors money and power often open gives access to opioids where they would otherwise be withheld without strict oversight and management. Elvis Presley provides perhaps the most famous example of unmanaged access to drugs.
In the iconic painting Broken Column, Kahlo represents her spine as a Greek column that is fractured and disintegrating. In this beautiful and tragic interpretation, the fractured column bespeaks Kahlo’s physical weakness and emotional instability.
The question of whether and how results from personal genetic testing will motivate behavioral changes in consumers has only begun to receive the research attention it richly deserves.
Medicine is a service industry, the product of which is health care, and its practitioners deserve remuneration. But to some, the notion of medicine as a road to personal wealth is an example of free-market economics gone awry.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(8):780-786. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.8.msoc1-1508.
The first women’s movement in the mid-nineteenth century endorsed anesthesia during childbirth and some of the very patterns of obstetric practice that became anathema to the natural childbirth movement a century later.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(3):253-257. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.3.msoc1-1503.
The U. S. health care system encourages patients to take more responsibility for their own treatment decisions and expects their doctors to cooperate in that effort. But the guidelines for exercising that responsibility remain very murky indeed.