Taking care of patients whose cultures, belief systems, and family hierarchy structures differ from those on which many U.S. laws and regulations involves strategies—particularly regarding end-of-life care and surrogate decision making.
Physicians may involve themselves in political advocacy as long as it does not damage patient relationships or erode access to health care. They may, in fact, have an obligation to do so.
Research on emergency room patients with life-threatening illness, conducted under the FDA-approved Exception From Informed Consent (EFIC) policy, does not further reduce the autonomy of such patients and offers potential benefit to those patients as well as others.
Ownership rights to tissue donated for research end when the tissue leaves the body, as does all claim to benefit from commercial cell lines or other products derived from the tissue.
Maureen Kelley, PhD discusses the dual-use dilemma in infectious disease research. The same scientific information or products intended for good can also fall into the wrong hands and be used to threaten a population in an act of bioterrorism.
In “Ethics of International Research: What Does Responsiveness Mean?” Christine Grady explains how developing countries are vulnerable to exploitation by researchers and explores what “responsiveness” to the needs of those populations might entail.
A physician advocate who has taken public advocacy stances against the federal government while employed by the government talks about the conflicts that arise between medicine and politics.