Explanation of the Medicare and Medicaid Antikickback statute and Stark Law and their restrictions on physicians' financial interests in ancillary services.
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 clinical case shows how medical commercialism poses risks to patients without symptoms who get full body scans. Screening for pre-morbid disease detection is valuable if implemented correctly but calls for physician caution.
Clinical trials for the blood substitute PolyHeme exposed the possibility for ambiguous interpretation of the FDA’s waiver of informed consent for emergency research.
Physicians’ ethical obligations to disclose conflicts of interest to patients and to obtain their informed consent for treatment are particularly critical when proposed treatments are experimental.
Parents’ right to choose the culture of their children and a child’s right to an open future outweigh the right of the Deaf to perpetuate their culture by disallowing government funding of cochlear implant research to restore hearing.
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.