The AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinions on confidential care for sexually active minors and physicians' exercise of conscience in refusal of services.
When the tension between solidarity and individualism hardens into entrenched oppositional politics, attempts to widen health care coverage are stymied.
An interview with Allan Ramsay, one of the five appointed members of the Green Mountain Care Board, which oversees the development of Vermont’s single-payer health care system.
Physicians will have a greater impact on health if they advocate for changes needed to prevent illness and harm than if they simply patch up those who are sick or harmed.
By virtue of their education and expertise, physicians have a responsibility to challenge scientifically inaccurate information about sexual health, but they may not opine about sexual norms for society in their professional capacity.
Physicians have a duty to educate lawmakers and the public about misinformation but they should not advocate for specific policies and thereby foreclose social dialogue on issues related to public health.
When patient autonomy became a closely held value in medical ethics in the 1960s and '70s, the physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to deliver a given service began to be contested.
When psychiatrists must submit evaluations of their patients in legal settings, they must provide complete and factual accounts even if the patient's attorneys would rather redact some information.