Dr Matthew L. Edwards joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Dr Nathaniel P. Morris: “How Inpatient Psychiatric Units Can Be Both Safe and Therapeutic.”
The neurodiversity movement challenges us to rethink autism through the lens of human diversity, valuing diversity in neurobiologic development as we would value it in gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.
Discussing CAM offers an opportunity to study the development of basic medical science that refuted vitalism, homeopathy, humoral theory, miasma theory, the doctrine of signatures, and other prescientific myths that persist today.
In treating children with autism, physicians should focus on involving parents in a shared decision making partnership and seeking safe, evidence-based, and medically and cost-effective treatments.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(4):310-317. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.4.ecas3-1504.