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Medical Ethics Advisor

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Articles

  • AMA: More pilot studies to boost organ donation

    The American Medical Association (AMA) is urging its members to support pilot studies of whether presumed consent and mandated choice policies could increase organ donations, while the nations organ matching system continues to be skeptical of the success of such programs in the United States.
  • Newborn screenings: Search for standards creates more questions

    Newborns in every state are screened for disorders that, if undetected, could lead to disability or death; but while some states test for nine or more conditions, others test for only one or two. Now, efforts are being made to bring uniformity to testing nationwide and to determine what tests are the most crucial.
  • Return of silicone implants: Safety still center of debate

    A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committees recommendation that silicone gel breast implants be returned to the United States market after an essential ban of 13 years is being met with approval from some in the medical community and dismay by others.
  • Direct-to-consumer ads change MD/patient dynamic

    You think the patient before you suffering from minor acid reflux will respond just fine to over-the-counter antacids, and you tell her so. But before you ever saw her, she had already decided that that purple pill advertised on television is what she needs, and theres no changing her mind.
  • News Briefs

    Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare System have created a center in Boston that will seek to address the deep division existing in medical status between racial and ethnic groups.
  • Can apology, honesty stem the med-mal tide?

    Are Im sorry really the magic words? According to a coalition of doctors, hospitals, attorneys, and patients, a lesson most of us learned as toddlers could be the key to stemming the flood of medical malpractice lawsuits in the United States.
  • Nurses say their smoking affects patient care

    Nurses who smoke experience feelings of guilt and embarrassment and also might be less likely to intercede with patients to encourage them to quit smoking because they feel to do so would be hypocritical.
  • Ads for elective body scans not full image

    Companies offering full-body computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans frequently make unsubstantiated claims about what the scans can do, but rarely give information about the limitations and risks of the tests.
  • ‘Best interest’ can be tricky when patient is unknown

    Questions surrounding resuscitation and other heroic measures, surrogacy, and withdrawal of futile care are complicated enough, but they can be even more complex when the patient is unidentified.
  • CMS says defib coverage could save thousands

    A decision by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to expand Medicare coverage of costly implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) will increase the number of Medicare beneficiaries eligible for an ICD by one-third, to nearly 500,000, and will require beneficiaries to release details about their cases to a database shared by hospitals.