As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):546-553. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.mhst1-1605.
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.
Fifty-seven percent of women in a recent large study did not want to view their ultrasounds before their abortions, suggesting that mandated viewing interferes with uncoerced consent to care, a hallmark of medical ethics.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.