Eitan Neidich, Alon B. Neidich, David A. Axelrod, MD, and John P. Roberts, MD
Geographic disparities in availability of organs for transplant have spawned for-profit companies that help patients get on waitlists in more than one region and arrange travel for them if an organ becomes available.
Recommendation for induced lactation in nonbiological mothers is widespread in the medical literature. To resist offering the service for nongestating lesbian mothers bespeaks potential discrimination.
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.
An undercurrent in all debates about allocation of health care resources to the poor is the matter of access to and coverage of health care for immigrants, particularly low-income and undocumented ones.
Some commentators say comparative trials of FDA-approved drugs are overburdened by current Common Rule regulations and that researchers should not be required to obtain explicit consent for participation in the most innocuous of these trials.
The social-justice question we must pose to physicians is: Are you willing to advocate for changes to the medical system that creates the need for you to take on charity care in the first place?
Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, MA and Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH
Participation in a research study—in which there are rigorous standards and close monitoring—may be a safer context for the use of medications in pregnancy than the clinical setting, where the evidence base is lacking.