The AAP’s guidelines on lipid screening for children raise concerns about the fundamental purpose of prevention and its role in balancing individual autonomy with the benefits of society at large.
Community-based participatory research ensures that community protections, risks, and benefits are considered during ethical reviews of research protocols.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(10):989-998. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.10.ecas3-1710.
Given the well-established correlation across cultures between poverty and unhealthy lifestyles, can it be just to hold individuals responsible for choices typical of their socioeconomic sector? Aren’t patient-responsibility programs simply conspiracies to shrink benefits to the poor?
The patient appears to have decision-making capacity, has head trauma, a headache despite intoxication, and is irritable—and she refuses a CT scan of the head.
Consent sounds like a laborious process that requires much time. Actually discussing a procedure or exam with a patient doesn’t take much more time than it took to read this paragraph.
Physicians make patients aware of those interventions that they (the patients) may then refuse. In short, informed consent is less about patient decisions than it is about restraining physicians.
A major contributor to the lack of medicines in developing countries is an intellectual property regime that allows proprietary drug companies with intellectual property monopolies to charge high prices and maximize profit.
Consideration of what constitutes sufficient information about how donation protocols can interfere with a patient’s dying process is a key feature of consent processes.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E708-716. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.708.
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.