AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Since ageism contributes to global mental health inequity among older people, responding to their needs should be a clinical, ethical, and policy priority.

Dr Pamela B. Teaster joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Al O. Giwa: "Ageism as a Source of Global Mental Health Inequity.”

Ageism is so structurally integrated and normalized in US health care that it is generally unnoticed by many clinicians. 

This article considers which risks AI-facilitated surgical robotics pose for safety, confidentiality, informed consent, and surgical training. 

Dr Chad M. Teven joins Ethics Talk to unravel some current and a few hoped-for surgical applications of AI and to model for us how we should be critically engaging with AI surgical research and scholarship.

Underlying ideological foundations of stigma and equipment inadequacy include thin-centrism and inadequate representation of fat people in health care organizational leadership.  

Size-based health and beauty ideals emanated from eugenic pseudoscientific postulates, and BMI continues to advance white supremacist embodiment norms. 

Physicians tend to rely on diagnostic criteria, including BMI, that can influence patients’ access to care, referrals, and insurance coverage for indicated interventions. 

Diagnostic utility of weight and body mass index is widely overestimated, and their use as health and wellness measures can be sources of iatrogenic harm. 

Biases rooted in historically entrenched assumptions about medical supremacy are reified in popular cultural representations of health professionals and in students’ lived experiences.