Doctors and hospitals must stop being bystanders to food-related illness and begin to become role models and educators in the transition to healthful eating habits, just as they did in tobacco cessation.
When a seriously ill mature minor and his parent disagree about his receiving an experimental intervention, who should decide what treatment he will receive?
Research has shown that ethics committees are less prevalent in rural hospitals than elsewhere, they do not fulfill the typical role, and they are seldom used; rural health care workers do not see bioethics analysis as applicable to the challenges they face, and they are hesitant to take action about many ethical problems.
Assigning community based on race suggests that phenotype reveals something consistent about biology that is equal in standing to factors like weight, dietary habits, smoking history, and whether or not you had rheumatic fever as a child.
Patients who use drugs intravenously may be at high risk for relapse, but their situation is no more futile than that of persons with diabetes and coronary artery disease who smoke and frequent all-you-can-eat buffets.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.