Dr Anna L. Westermair joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Manuel Trachsel: “Moral Intuitions About Futility as Prompts for Evaluating Goals in Mental Health Care.”
The eradication of hazing has not diminished the socialization, camaraderie, or commitment of new recruits. The physical, emotional, and mental demands of basic training suffice to produce the outcomes previously ascribed to hazing.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
Medical school faculty have a nonnegotiable duty to report students whose professional behavior falls seriously short of the mark. If they refrain from fulfilling this duty for fear of retaliation, the antiharassment pendulum has truly swung too far.
Laurel J. Lyckholm, MD and Arwa K. Aburizik, MD, MS
Decision-making capacity can be preserved in patients with mental illness and should be formally assessed in the context of their values and past decisions.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(5):444-453. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.ecas4-1705.