Lusine Aghajanova, MD, PhD and Cecilia T. Valdes, MD
While sex selection of children for nonmedical reasons is not prohibited in the United States, the authors believe that sperm sorting should not be used until more safety data are available.
A physician in a university student health center may feel a duty to intervene when he finds out from a patient that a student who is not a patient is diverting medication, but doing so would violate patient confidentiality.
Neuroscience's associations between localized brain activity and specific cognitive tasks is not sufficient evidence for rejecting the notion of free will and absolving individuals of responsibility for their behavior.
Because maintaining strict confidentiality is often untenable, or even illegal, determining the extent of protections in the postmortem context ultimately entails a weighing of the various interests at stake.
Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Dorothy E. Roberts, JD
The call for structural competency encourages medicine to broaden its approach to matters of race and culture so that it might better address both individual-level doctor and patient characteristics and institutional factors.
The AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinion on adolescent care affirms competent minors' right to confidentiality except in situations for which confidentiality for adults may be breached.