AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Using social media tools in health-related research involves challenges to confidentiality, privacy, and consent.

Community-based participatory research ensures that community protections, risks, and benefits are considered during ethical reviews of research protocols.

The teach-to-goal method should be used to assess comprehension of incarcerated patients and other vulnerable groups during the informed consent process.

Research is needed on surrogates’ susceptibility to believing that clinical trials provide individual therapeutic benefit.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions related to language and hierarchy in medicine.

Which distinctions between minimally conscious states and vegetative states should clinicians consider?

The Bioethics Commission’s recommendations to include research participants with impaired consent capacity provide an ethical foundation for neuroscience.

Protecting patients rather than informed consent should be the goal when the complexity of information overwhelms patients’ decision-making capacity.

This month, AMA Journal of Ethics theme editor Margaret Cocks, MD, PhD, a third-year resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital, interviewed Theonia Boyd, MD, about ethical issues pathologists face when conducting autopsies and obtaining specimens.

Amendments to the Common Rule and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) raise questions about broad consent and sale of health data.