Physicians of patients who request physician-assisted suicide should not avoid the subject and should try to discuss the patients' specific concerns and fears with them.
While there are benefits to genetic screening during pregnancy, parents must not let their desire for a genetically perfect child allow them to terminate a pregnancy because of non-medical factors.
William E. Novotny, MD and Ronald M. Perkin, MD, MA
Physicians need to understand the resources available to them to serve the sometimes conflicting needs of the pediatric patients' best interest and the religious beliefs of the patients' parents.
Physicians need to understand the resources available to them to serve the sometimes conflicting needs of the pediatric patients' best interest and the religious beliefs of the patients' parents.
David Collier, MD, PhD, Ronald M. Perkin, MD, MA, and Joseph R. Zanga, MD
The legal definitions of child neglect and child abuse are not as clear cut when faced with the issue of whether parents should be held responsible for failing to follow weight-loss plans for a morbidly obese child.
The American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on the Family recommends that pediatricians take a more active role in helping to insure that the family environment is conducive to a child's emotional and physical well-being.
Refusals of psychotropic medication by detained criminal defendants raise conflicting dual loyalties for psychiatrists between the duty to treat a patient and the duty to protect society from that patient.
Physicians need to take an active role in improving the genetic literacy of the general population and also push for public health policies that make new genetic tools available to everyone.