As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):546-553. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.mhst1-1605.
Two bioethicists argue that prenatal disability screening promotes negativity toward the disabled and gives parents the ability to selectively form families.
A philosophy professor argues that prenatal genetic testing allows potentially painful afflictions to be discovered prior to birth and does not unjustly discriminate against disabled people.
A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.
Professional, practical, clinical and cultural obligations should guide decision making when a funding agency restricts the types of counseling and advice it allows medical professionals to dispense.
Rebecca J. Cook, JD, JSD and Bernard M. Dickens, LLB, LLM, PhD, LLD
Two legal experts argue that in order for physicians to exercise their right to conscientious objection, they should explain why they are refusing to treat a patient and then refer the patient to another professional for medical treatment.
Two physicians offer commentaries about the use of prenatal predictive testing for a late-onset disease like Huntington's and question whether the pregnant woman should ultimately have the decisional autonomy to determine the quality of life of the unborn child.