For many physicians, lack of understanding about brain death leads to confusion and muddles interactions with patients’ loved ones at the end of life.

Principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence guide trauma-informed care. Care ethics should also support this framework for responding to the health needs of trafficked patients.

The default principle—that someone is free to do what he or she desires in the absence of a compelling reason why he or she should not—may make it possible to resolve ethical disputes without recourse to a particular moral framework.

Julian Savulescu's writing on conscientious objection is guided by an emphasis on the principle of distributive justice that does not allow religion to have a special status as justification.

When deciding whether a pregnant woman will take antidepressants that pose a slight risk to the fetus, the patient and doctor must each make value-based determinations about whether absolute protection of the fetus is more important than preventing the mother’s probable suffering.

Some question whether plastic surgeons bear responsibility for promoting suspect norms of beauty, given that certain types of cosmetic enhancements reinforce common conceptions of normality that are harmful to society.

Recent legislative and regulatory actions extend equal protection under the law to members of the LGBT community.

The principle of double effect and proportionate reason can be a useful way of assessing actions as moral or immoral.

Although parents may someday have the ability to enhance the complex physical and mental traits of their offspring, such genetic enhancements raise a number of difficult ethical questions.

Testimonial injustice is an expression of racism that uses identity to undermine individuals’ credibility as authoritative “knowers” of their own bodies, selves, and experiences.