Jodi Halpern, MD, PhD and Richard L. Kravitz, MD, MSPH
Just as people frequently support political parties without endorsing their entire platforms, perhaps physicians can support a health care advocacy organization without agreeing with its screening guidelines.
The primary care physician and activist Dr. Gordon Schiff advises those advocating for systemic change to set priorities, work with others, and realize the power of small actions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(5):465-468. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.mnar1-1505.
Roy Ahn, MPH, ScD, Kristina Tester, Zaid Altawil, MD, and Thomas F. Burke, MD
To promote good practices, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in global health should adopt and follow rules of professional conduct that put communities’ wants and needs over those of the NGOs.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(5):456-460. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.pfor2-1505.
This month, AMA Journal of Ethics' theme editor, Nadi N. Kaonga, a medical student and predoctoral candidate at Tufts University in Boston, interviewed Gordon D. Schiff, MD, on reframing professional boundaries in the patient-physician relationship.
The high price of cancer drugs in the US relative to European countries with universal health care raises ethical issues of access, financial burden on patients, and unsustainability of the health care system.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(8):750-753. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.8.nlit1-1508.
The American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions on physicians’ self-referral and physicians’ sale of health-related and non-health-related products from their offices.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(8):739-743. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.8.coet1-1508.
Racial integration in American organized medicine was very slow to come, and many wrongs were committed in the name of reunifying the country's doctors after the Civil War.
The use of drones and satellite imagery for humanitarian purposes raises threats to the core humanitarian principles of impartiality and respect for the independence of those being aided if disaster victims are not included in disaster planning.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):931-937. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.stas1-1510.
In King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court determined that the phrase “an Exchange established by the State” in the Affordable Care Act includes exchanges created by the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), thereby rendering users of HHS exchanges eligible to receive subsidies.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):938-944. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.hlaw1-1510.