All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.
“Difficult” patient-physician encounters have roots in uncertainty about individuals’ trustworthiness, clinicians’ skills and training, and medical science.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(4):391-398. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.4.mhst1-1704.
For a medical school admissions committee to consider social networking activities during the selection process without informing candidates would violate the principles of transparency and consistency and could lead to worthy applications being rejected.
Physicians who have adequately informed a competent patient of his or her diagnosis, its meaning, and medically appropriate options should then accept the patient’s informed consent or refusal of treatment.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
Clinical facts and physicians’ ethical obligations are critical in resolving disagreements between parents and physicians about resuscitation of an extremely premature infant.