Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.
A philosophical analysis of how physician actions and treatment goals are defined and interpreted and how understanding this process can affect the success of the clinical encounter.
Clinical trials for the blood substitute PolyHeme exposed the possibility for ambiguous interpretation of the FDA’s waiver of informed consent for emergency research.
In “Ethics of International Research: What Does Responsiveness Mean?” Christine Grady explains how developing countries are vulnerable to exploitation by researchers and explores what “responsiveness” to the needs of those populations might entail.
A physician explains that the sale of nonprescription cosmeceuticals from a dermatology office should be done in a manner that is educational but non-threatening to patients.
A physician and a lawyer argue against a dermatology clinic switching from a small, reliable pathology lab to a large-scale pathology lab in order to receive volume discounts and increase profit.
A physician responds to a previous article about the differences between using a commercial laboratory and a smaller hospital or pathology group lab for dermatological tests.
A physician defends her position that children should only participate in clinical trials when they have child assent and the parents also have been educated about the purpose of the research when there is no direct benefit to the child.
The history of the AMA's policy on anencephalic newborns as organ donors is a living example of what medical science can do sometimes conflicts with society's support or nonsupport of those possibilities.