Critical skills required to weigh decisions with serious consequences, manipulate information rationally, and choose wisely are skills that are likely to be impaired by frontal lobe injury that results in personality change.
Respecting another’s religious beliefs does not compel us to accept that those beliefs have been examined and are autonomously espoused. We come to hold beliefs in a multitude of ways, not all of which are fully informed and uncoerced.
Katherine Gentry, MD, MA and Aaron Wightman, MD, MA
A patient’s refusal of tracheostomy during an anticipated difficult intubation prompts critical questions about how to best express respect for a pediatric patient’s autonomy and whether and when deviation from standard of care is clinically and ethically appropriate.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E683-689. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.683.
Rebekah Davis Reed, PhD, JD and Erik L. Antonsen, PhD, MD
Though the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s collection of disaggregated genetic data for occupational surveillance and research raises numerous privacy concerns, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 allows genetic information to be used to develop personal pharmaceuticals.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(9):E849-856. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.849.
Emergency medical consultations share with other emergencies the need for prompt action, potentially without information or tools ordinarily available.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):479-484. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.ecas1-1605.