AMA Journal of Ethics editor Audiey Kao, MD, PhD, interviewed Richard Pan, MD, MPH, about how, as a physician and legislator, he seeks to protect public health in light of recurrent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases.
We must try to understand why there is such certainty about poor prognosis in severe brain-injury cases, when in fact many patients recover, albeit to a level of function most of us would not desire.
We really can't promise both more transplants and better outcomes. The controversies over organ allocation really represent intellectual exhaustion in the face of a long series of inadequate policy responses to the decade-long trend of the kidney supply increasing only at the expense of organ quality and patient outcomes.
When a would-be living organ donor wants to accept risk in the name of altruism when there is little chance for benefit or significant chance for harm, physicians are justified in limiting that altruism.
The early diagnosis of Alzheimer disease is a boon in that it enables advance planning, but that planning process can engender conflict between respect for future-oriented autonomy and future welfare.
In “Allocating Scare Resources in a Pandemic,” Martin Strosberg calls attention to the need for preparedness planning including methods for rationing vaccines, antiviral medications, and intensive care unit beds and staff.
Variations among physicians in diagnosis and X-ray interpretation, the percentages of which have remained essentially unchanged for five decades, raise serious ethical concerns.