A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.
Advance directives do not always resolve questions about the best care for patients who no longer have decision-making capacity; physicians and patient surrogates can take alternative approaches to arrive at the best care decision.
There is a market for direct-to-consumer genetic testing and a need for better consumer information and more regulation of tests and testing laboratories.
U.S. and international medical organizations recommend against testing children for genetic diseases that occur after adolescence and for which no prevention or treatment is available.