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If, by arresting a doctor and two nurses in the deaths of patients at a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti anticipated being hailed as a hero of the downtrodden and helpless, no doubt the backlash surprised him.
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It's an ambush of sorts a patient, armed with information on the latest prescription drug gleaned from television or print advertising, insists that his or her doctor prescribe the drug, even if the physician is unfamiliar with the drug or unsure of its safety and efficacy.
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Research studies on the effects of prayer on healing have yielded contrasting findings, but can and should medicine try to quantify and qualify religious faith as a healing modality?
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Perhaps for as long as there have been physicians, there has been the notion that sometimes what a patient knows could hurt him. "Therapeutic privilege," the decision by a physician to withhold information from a patient for his or her own good, is a concept of the past, the American Medical Association (AMA) has determined.
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Employing placebo therapy without patients' knowledge or cooperation is unethical, the American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs states in a new report.
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Physician peer review has been a galvanizing topic since the mid-1980s, when federal law imposed protections for those lodging charges against physicians; protections that, depending on your opinion, either protect the peer review process or allow it to serve as a weapon for hospitals and dishonest physicians to rid themselves of whistleblowers and competitors.
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In 2000, literally a handful of physicians were practicing what has become known as concierge medicine they had slashed their patient load to a fraction of the number of patients seen in a traditional practice, and were charging their remaining 300 to 400 patients a retainer fee that gave them access to the doctors' services around-the-clock and for as much time as they needed.
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Clinical trials involving gene therapy are considered to be of great enough real and potential risk that they are not attempted in children before they have been conducted with adults.
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A gravely ill Sephardic Jew came to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from his home in Israel, hoping to find a successful treatment for his terminal cancer. The treatment did not yield the results he had hoped, but chaplain Rabbi Levi Meier visited his room with something more comforting than medicine.
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Abraham Cherrix is a 15-year-old boy with Hodgkin's disease. He's also an Internet-savvy free thinker who doesn't want to do another round of chemotherapy and radiation; what he wants to do is go to Mexico for a controversial herbal treatment he hopes will cure him.
