Doctors and hospitals must stop being bystanders to food-related illness and begin to become role models and educators in the transition to healthful eating habits, just as they did in tobacco cessation.
Until healthful food is widely affordable and accessible to all people, any discussions of how policy might infringe on the right to choose may be misguided.
Siddhartha Devarakonda, MD, Ramaswamy Govindan, MD, and Peter S. Hammerman, MD, PhD
While next-generation genome-sequencing technology has great potential to aid cancer research, ethical challenges concerning privacy and confidentiality and the ownership of inventions remain.
Karen Uhlenhuth, Angira Patel, MD, and John Lantos, MD
A statin drug will not give a 10-year-old a high level of energy, the freedom to interact with peers without fear of being bullied, or a generally happy outlook on life.
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.
Lawrence J. Cheskin, MD, Scott Kahan, MD, MPH, and Gail Geller, ScD, MHS
Many health professionals harbor negative biases toward individuals who are obese. Cultivating an awareness of our own biases is the best way to avoid acting on them.
The guidelines for patients’ eligibility for bariatric surgery have not changed since 1991, although recent data suggest there may be indications for broadening application of the surgery.
The rationale for policy intervention to reduce obesity rates appears compelling. Justification for intervening in the case of children is particularly strong, and precedent suggests that society will more readily accept appropriate restrictions to youth behavior.