This month, Virtual Mentor issue editor Rashmi Kudesia interviewed Sarah S. Richardson about the emerging field of “maternal effects,” that is, the study of the influences of a pregnant woman’s behavior, exposures, and physiology on her offspring’s future health and development.
This month theme issue editor, Trahern Jones, a fourth-year student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, spoke with Dr. Edward Laskowski about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances among athletes today.
Is it ethical to create and advertise, either publicly or during office visits, package deals that offer patients an incentive to have procedures they are not already seeking and might not have considered?
Within the patient-physician relationship, the request for neuroenhancement becomes a chief concern, and the physician has a duty to take a history and perform a physical exam to determine whether the patient’s current level of function represents significant change.
This poster on a screening method for symptoms and their relation to population health won honorable mention in the 2017 Conley Art of Medicine Contest.
AMA J Ethics. 2018; 20(2):197-198. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2018.20.2.imhl2-1802.
Some question whether plastic surgeons bear responsibility for promoting suspect norms of beauty, given that certain types of cosmetic enhancements reinforce common conceptions of normality that are harmful to society.
Comics allowed me to convey multiple layers of a single experience. With both text and image at my disposal, I could use one to enhance the other or create contradictions and juxtapositions that were jarring or darkly humorous.
The pharmaceutical industry's influence on the process of defining illness can be positive, as when drug companies increase public awareness of disease and develop effective therapies, or negative, if it pushes the boundaries of illness too far in pursuit of profit.
Because regulatory approval of cognitive enhancement drugs is likely, physicians may want to consider whether they would condone the practice for restoration of function only or for enhancement purposes as well.