Author's posts
Off-label prescriptions, side effects, and lawsuits: Navigating ethical and legal dilemmas
A recent TV advertisement attempted to recruit clients for a class action suit against a pharmaceutical manufacturer (PM) for a medication side effect (SE). The “cause of action” was unstated: was it the side effect’s existence or tha…
Shared decision-making in health care: promise vs. reality
The American Heart Association (AHA) recently published a statement on the importance of shared decision-making (SDM) between physicians and patients. This concept, though at least 50 years old, has become popular in the last decade or so, with expecta…
Debunking sensational euthanasia myths in the Netherlands
While surfing cellphone news headlines, my attention was caught by one from the New York Post that blared: “Dutch are Euthanizing Autistic People.” The Post aims for sensationalism, and the headline implied mass slaughter, akin to the Nazi …
Challenging misconceptions in nursing education
Regressive legislators in a Southwestern state discovered that doctoral-level nursing students, future nurse practitioners at the state university, were receiving education in human sexuality. As watchdogs of public morality, and with a conviction that…
Balancing health care worker immunization and patient safety
Recently, I heard a news report regarding several states’ attorneys general suing the federal government to eliminate the requirement that health care providers be immunized against COVID. They argued that as fully immunized individuals still con…
Navigating the complexity of “first do no harm” in modern medicine
“First do no harm” is the opening line of the Hippocratic Oath, and virtually everyone is familiar with it, as it is quoted on every TV medical drama at least once a season. We tend to think that the oath was highly influential in medical t…
The vaccination dilemma: Protecting patient rights or caregiver freedom?
Recently, I heard a news report regarding several state attorneys general suing the federal government to eliminate the requirement that health care providers be immunized against COVID. They argued that as fully immunized individuals still contract CO…
A rush to judgment on acetaminophen?
Less than a year ago, a position paper/meta-analysis was published whose authors concluded that the pain reliever acetaminophen, and products containing this compound, were contraindicated in pregnancy as they could result in premature or stillborn bir…
Literacy and patients’ understanding of health education
In my first bioethics class, the components of health education (HE) were just being developed, and despite the passage of time, full understanding remains elusive as HE proved far more complex than originally conceived. We learned, simplistically, by …
