The stigma associated with contracting a sexually transmitted disease was originally perpetrated within the health care system as early as the 16th century and subsequently reinforced in the wider society.
Public health officials have a responsibility to alert the public to prospective dangers without unduly restricting individual freedom or adding to the stigmatization of certain illnesses.
Forced sterilization of HIV-positive women, which is widespread in South Africa, Namibia, and Chile, violates women’s human right to autonomy and the principle of informed consent and is medically unnecessary.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):952-957. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.pfor2-1510.
This month, AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Nikhil A. Patel, MS, a fourth-year medical student at the Mayo Medical School, interviewed Joia Mukherjee, MD, MPH, about Partners In Health’s mission to strengthen low-income countries’ health care systems and lessons learned from the Ebola crisis.
This month, Virtual Mentor theme issue editor Kimberley Swartz, a medical student at the University of Florida College of Medicine, interviewed Dr. Gary Wang about the use of Truvada, approved in 2012 as a pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV infection.
The combination of low HIV literacy on the part of older adults and health care professionals’ assumption that they are at low risk leads to insufficiently early testing for HIV and late diagnosis.