Physicians have an ethical responsibility to caregivers whose psychological distress is caused by their experience of the patient’s illness and treatment.
AMA J Ethics. 2017; 19(5):493-500. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.msoc3-1705.
Anne-Marie Laberge, MD, PhD and Wylie Burke, MD, PhD
Physicians and counselors must address the importance of communicating genetic test results to family members in the pre-test counseling and informed-consent processes prior to testing.
The practice of banking sperm from adolescents about to undergo chemotherapy is not universal, which lends support to the argument that parental consent be required for the intervention.
A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.
A medical team’s unprofessional reactions to the birth of a baby with ambiguous genitalia reflects their discomfort with variations in sex characteristics and sets a poor example for medical students.
A medical team’s unprofessional reactions to the birth of a baby with ambiguous genitalia reflects their discomfort with variations in sex characteristics and sets a poor example for medical students.
Clinical and psychosocial considerations influence how oncologists approach discussing sperm banking with adolescent patients who are about to undergo chemotherapy and with the parents of those patients.
There is a market for direct-to-consumer genetic testing and a need for better consumer information and more regulation of tests and testing laboratories.