As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):546-553. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.mhst1-1605.
Federal regulations governing egg donation fall into two categories: safety testing and truth in advertising. Neither deals directly with informed consent by, for example, specifying what information donors must be given.
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.
An attempt to investigate correlations between race, attitudes, and contraceptive use did not find meaningful associations between race and attitudes about birth control or pregnancy that could influence contraceptive choice.
State laws prohibiting sodomy were on the books throughout US history until struck down by the US Supreme Court, which argued in Lawrence v Texas (2003) that the state cannot criminalize private sexual conduct.
An argument that the concept of judicious dissent can resolve the debate over a physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to provide lawful services.