AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Pharmaceuticals make symptoms and biological drug targets more visible but can render individual and community suffering less visible.

Risk managers can help patient-subjects and clinician-researchers make informed novel device implantation decisions in the absence of preclinical trial data.

Shared decision making in research informed consent conversations is complex due to diverse and potentially divergent interests of investigators and patient-subjects.

Given organ scarcity, transplantation programs state that patient promises of compliance cannot be taken at face value, excluding candidates who are deemed untrustworthy.

Even disclosed conflicts of interest can be dangerous in health care settings, but disclosure might not be the panacea many seem to take it to be.

As larger organizations become more influential in the health care sector, the Code can help physicians navigate those organizations’ influence on their practices.

Corporatization in health care has complicated clinicians’ and organizations’ efforts to balance interests of individual patients against an organization’s bottom line.

Upcoding and misrepresenting clinical information constitute fraud, cost a lot, and can result in patient harm and unnecessary procedures and prescriptions.

Overall utilization of the few biosimilars currently available to patients has been limited.

Since the 1960s, drug names have been products of complex, multiparty negotiations in which interests of patients, pharmaceutical firms, clinicians, and US and international regulators must be balanced.