AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Compassion for vulnerable patients is essential to the art of medicine, which has not advanced with the science of medicine.

Since the 1970s, various factors have generated a shift in medical culture from the prioritization of individual autonomy to relational autonomy

A physician may withhold information from a patient if he believes that he is acting in accordance with the patient’s wishes and best interests.

New regulations governing informed consent might not be advantageous.

If a medical decision about high-value care involves a conflict between the principles of beneficence and justice, an explicit analysis of the individual case is necessary to ensure that the interests of both the patient and society are served.

Good clinicians understand why a patient is asking for a test or treatment, and their skillful counseling can often stem the tide of requests for marginally beneficial tests and procedures.

Health care professionals’ use of social media can pose ethical challenges related to the boundary between professional and personal identities, privacy, confidentiality, and the trustworthiness of health care professionals.

Physicians who torture historically have not been held accountable by the law or medical profession, but national medical associations can promote accountability.

Although force-feeding prisoners might seem to be in the interests of beneficence and justice, international codes of ethics permit prisoners to refuse nourishment if they make a rational, uncoerced choice to do so.

Forced sterilization of HIV-positive women, which is widespread in South Africa, Namibia, and Chile, violates women’s human right to autonomy and the principle of informed consent and is medically unnecessary.