While some families grieve the sudden loss of relatives, others are faced with a series of difficult ethical decisions shared with the caregivers, other family members, and society as a whole.
Turning away care of unvaccinated patients is a gross misunderstanding of how healthcare works.
What happens when the rate of technological developments – especially biomedical ones – begins to outpace the rate at which our definition of humanity develops?
Successfully resurrecting now-extinct museum-dwellers would be a scientific feat on par with the moon landing.
We easily fall into this type of thinking – attributing misfortune to the person, their body, or their behavior – and fail to consider wider structures.
The most recent abortion ban in Texas is a prime example of the lack of understanding in science displayed by the policymakers and lobbyists advocating for tighter restrictions on abortion.
While the constitutionality debate over Texas’s anti-abortion law continues, the ethical impact it has on race and ethnicity is an aspect that requires further consideration.
The medical field should be committed to ending all forms of discrimination and should actively oppose any policy that restricts minority groups without legitimate grounds, especially when those restrictions negatively impact public health.
Together, these cases illustrate some of the good and some of the alarming developments that come from so much genetic information being available online, and so much of it traceable to individuals.
With the success of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, it is likely that many pharmaceutical companies will utilize recent mRNA advancements to target other diseases.
The AMA’s code of ethics has evolved greatly since then; as technology and medical knowledge has advanced, physicians find themselves in increasingly morally gray situations.
As of October 2021, neither a price nor a date has been set for the release of CRISPR as a gene therapy option available to the general public; nevertheless, interest in the development of this technology has led to much debate over ethical questions related to the use of the technology.